# Jaak Aab

# Jaak Aab

Jaak Aab (born 9 April 1960 in Taagepera, Valga County) is an Estonian politician and a member of the Riigikogu. He joined the [Estonian Centre Party](/organizations/estonian-centre-party) in September 1994 and left it on 5 January 2024, joining the Social Democratic Party five days later. The parliament's short biography of 19 June 2025 places him in the XV Riigikogu for the constituency covering Järva County and Viljandi County, names him a Social Democratic board member, and lists him among the members who sit outside a faction. In September 2026 Estonian Public Broadcasting still described him as a Social Democratic member of the Riigikogu.

He finished Viljandi 5th Secondary School in 1978 and in 1986 qualified as a teacher of Russian language and literature at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute, which the later parliamentary biography records as Tallinn University. He taught at Ala and in Võhma, and from 19 January 1988 to 23 October 1989 was first secretary of the Viljandi district committee of the Estonian Leninist Communist Youth League. From 31 October 1991 to 31 March 1994 he worked in Finland as a substitute worker in Pielavesi municipality. He was deputy mayor of Võhma from 1 November 1994 to 1 January 1996 and mayor from 18 August 1998 to 6 February 2002.

From 22 July 2003 to 13 April 2005 he was executive director of the Association of Estonian Cities. He had already sat in the IX Riigikogu, from 7 February 2002 to 21 March 2003. In April 2005 the government of Andrus Ansip appointed him Minister of Social Affairs, and the parliamentary biography carries that office through 2007. In the XI Riigikogu, from 2007 to 2011, he was deputy chairman of the Social Affairs Committee. As [Centre Party](/organizations/centre-party) secretary general he was chosen in 2017 to succeed Mihhail Korb as Minister of Public Administration under Prime Minister Jüri Ratas. He held the post again from 29 April 2019. President Kersti Kaljulaid later approved his appointment as Minister of Education and Research after Mailis Reps stepped down, and the parliamentary biography dates that term to 2020–2021. The same biography records a further term as Minister of Public Administration in 2021–2022, in the government of [Kaja Kallas](/people/kaja-kallas). In March 2021, as deputy prime minister, he carried out her duties while she recovered from COVID-19.

On 17 April 2018 he announced that he was resigning as Minister of Public Administration. Police had stopped him driving at 73 kilometres an hour where the limit was 50, and a test put his blood alcohol at 0.28; Estonian Public Broadcasting noted the country's zero-tolerance rule on drink-driving. He said that he deeply regretted the incident and that he had learned his lesson. At the 2019 Riigikogu election he received 2,227 votes in district 8, on the Centre Party list. When he left the party in January 2024 he said that he and colleagues had tried to be active in national politics but had not received the necessary support from chair [Mihhail Kõlvart](/people/mihhail-kolvart) and the party management, and that he wanted to stay in politics for another decade. The Harju County Social Democratic branch elected him chair the following month. On 11 November 2025 the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) and the [Estonian Reform Party](/organizations/estonian-reform-party) signed a coalition agreement in Jõelähtme naming Aab as their candidate for municipal council chair and Andrus Umboja as their candidate for mayor.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Taagepera and Viljandi

Jaak Aab was born on 9 April 1960 in Taagepera village, Helme parish, Valga County, then in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. A 2005 government profile called him a man of Mulgimaa, the cultural district of southern Estonia that includes Helme.

He attended the eight-year school at Ala, in the same parish, from 1967 to 1972, and Viljandi 5th Secondary School (Viljandi V Keskkool) from 1972 to 1978. In a 2009 interview with the Viljandi newspaper *Sakala* he said those secondary-school years were when his personality took shape, and that if asked for his hometown he would answer Viljandi. His mother still lived in Taagepera, and he stopped in the town when travelling through.

### Teaching and the Komsomol

From 1978 to 1986 he trained in Tallinn as a teacher of Russian language and literature, and from the mid-1980s he taught in southern Estonia, including at the school in Võhma.

*The Võhma school building.*

The Tallinn school was the Eduard Vilde Tallinn Pedagogical Institute, the name it had carried since 1955. It became Tallinn Pedagogical University in 1992 and, by a Riigikogu decision of 18 March 2005, Tallinn University. A volume of members' short biographies current on 19 June 2025 records the 1986 qualification under that later name and states that it corresponds to a master's degree. The 2005 curriculum vitae rated his Russian very good in speech and writing, Finnish good, German satisfactory and English elementary.

Classroom work began before the degree was finished. From 30 January 1984 to 31 August 1985 he taught at the Ala eight-year school. *Lõuna-Eesti Postimees* reported in July 2020 that the spell lasted about a year and a half and that the subjects were Estonian and Russian. The 2025 parliamentary note dates the Ala post more loosely, as 1983–1985.

From 1 September 1985 to 19 January 1988 the government CV lists him as a teacher and hobby leader (*huvijuht*) at Võhma Gümnaasium. The 2020 article also described him as a pioneer leader at the Võhma school. On 19 January 1988 he became first secretary of the Viljandi district committee of the Eestimaa Leninlik Kommunistlik Noorsooühing (ELKNÜ), the Estonian organisation of the Komsomol, and held the post until 23 October 1989.

He told *Sakala* that he had come into the role from the side, while working at the Võhma school, when it was already clear that the Komsomol had no future. He said he had stated that at a meeting of a [Communist Party](/organizations/communist-party) committee, while the party itself did not yet want to accept that it was finished, and that he had not been a career youth official. By his account the committee's work was no longer ideological: it organised leisure for young people, including the Rock Ramp festival and gatherings in summer and winter. He called himself the last Komsomol secretary and said the organisation was dissolved peacefully.

From 23 October 1989 to 30 October 1991 he was again at the Võhma school, which that CV calls Võhma Keskkool, as a teacher and deputy director for instruction and upbringing. The 2025 biography merges those Võhma posts—teacher, hobby leader and deputy head, 1985–1991—and does not list the Komsomol interval separately.

### Years in Finland

From 31 October 1991 to 31 March 1994 Aab worked in Finland as a holiday substitute (*puhkuseasendaja*) for the municipality of Pielavesi. The 2005 government profile described the work of those transition years as farm labour. After returning to Estonia he entered Võhma local government, taking office as deputy mayor on 1 November 1994.

## Local government in Võhma

### Deputy mayor

A curriculum vitae on the [Estonian government](/organizations/estonian-government) website, published while Jaak Aab was social minister, records him as deputy mayor of Võhma, in Viljandi County, from 1 November 1994 to 1 January 1996. A short biography for the XV Riigikogu in June 2025 instead gives the deputy-mayor years as 1994–1998, without saying what he did between January 1996 and the mayoralty that began in August 1998.

Võhma, a town from 1993, depended on the meat plant Võhma Lihakombinaat. After a 1994 bankruptcy, AS AF Pärnu bought the plant on 1 August for 10 million kroons. Production stopped on 20 March 1996, after the deputy term in the government CV; the last goods left on 28 March, Pärnu County Court declared the owner bankrupt on 24 May, and on 10 July the administrator ended all 361 remaining contracts. The council paid each worker 100 kroons, a kindergarten soup kitchen opened on 15 April, and on 19 November the government allocated 400,000 kroons for heating fuel. Population fell from 1,983 in 1989 to 1,596 in 2000, and manufacturing jobs from 608 to 95. Mayor Enno Plaks is listed from 26 November 1993 to 30 June 1998.

### Mayor

The government CV and the 2018 register both date Aab’s mayoralty from 18 August 1998 to 6 February 2002. AS Trade Energy Best had bought the plant, announced mushroom growing, and dropped the plan at the end of 1998; a successor firm was declared bankrupt in Narva in December 2000. In June 2001 Aab told *Sakala* that Võhma had fallen into a “black hole” after 1996: successive insolvencies and the handling of the property had blocked jobs, trustees and the businessmen involved were not concerned with the town’s people, and the city government had sought enterprise sites away from the plant. He put the 1980s workforce above 800 and the 1996 workforce at 360. A local plant history points to his October 2001 article “Investeeringutest Võhma linnas” in *Võhma Linnaleht*, and the 2002 national bibliography lists Riina Pakane and Jaak Aab as editors of that monthly, issued by the city government from February 1996.

He left office on 6 February 2002 and sat in the IX Riigikogu from the next day. From 12 February to 20 October 2002 he chaired the town council, while Ants Pärna, council chair since 2 November 1993, was mayor until 16 November 2005. In 2009 Aab said that as mayor he had sat for years on the board of the county association of municipalities, and that this local work was the part of government closest to him; he also said he believed those years had helped the town last.

### Councils and the Viljandi campaign

The National Electoral Committee’s candidate archive records Aab as elected to Võhma council in 1993 on the local list Elujõuline Võhma (33 votes), in 1996 on Kodulinn Võhma (75), in 1999 for an alliance of the Estonian Centre Party and the Coalition Party (161), and for the Centre Party in 2002 (118) and 2005 (128). The 2025 biography says he was elected across 1993–2005 and sat in several compositions, and dates his Centre Party membership from 1994.

In October 2009 the Centre Party named him its candidate for mayor of Viljandi. On 13 October he told *Sakala* that Viljandi was his hometown because he had finished secondary school there, and that he would move from Tallinn if elected. The proposals, not steps already taken, were to keep social aid, including bus concessions and free lunches at least through basic school; finish an expanded nursing home, which he called the main project, and open a day centre for older people; replace the 1979 general plan; seek European Union money for a possible lake cableway; and try to raise a 2,000-kroon school-bag payment to 3,000 kroons.

On 18 October the Estonian Reform Party took 2,990 votes and 11 of 27 seats. Kodune Viljandi won seven seats and the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union five; the Centre Party won four, one fewer than before. Aab’s 335 votes were fourth, behind mayor Kalle Jents of the [Reform Party](/organizations/reform-party) with 933; he entered the council and did not become mayor. The 2025 biography also records his election to Viljandi council in 2021.

## Parliament and the Association of Estonian Cities

### The IX Riigikogu

Aab entered the IX Riigikogu on 7 February 2002 as a substitute member (*asendusliige*) and remained until 21 March 2003. The seat opened after members of the Estonian Centre Party left parliament for [Siim Kallas](/people/siim-kallas)'s government at the end of January 2002. Olavi Israel, Aadu Must and Feliks Undusk, who were due to take the resulting substitute places, told the Riigikogu board that they would not take up the work or give the oath; on 6 February 2002 the Supreme Court, on the board's application, terminated their mandates. The composition roll then records Aab, with Teet Helm and Nelli Privalova, as having entered on 7 February; [the Centre](/organizations/the-centre) faction lists him from 11 February 2002.

From 12 February 2002 he sat on the Economic Affairs Committee. On 17 April 2002 the Riigikogu formed a seven-member investigative committee on the privatisation of AS Narva Elektrijaamad, the Narva Power Plants, and on whether the related expenditure had been justified (RT I 2002, 36, 222). Aab was its chair and Kalev Kukk its deputy chair; the other members were Vootele Hansen, Kalle Jürgenson, Endel Paap, Janno Reiljan and Arvo Sirendi. Its task was an impartial account of the factual and legal circumstances of the privatisation and of the expediency of the costs. The committee filed its report on 10 February 2003, together with a dissenting opinion, and its powers ended with the IX Riigikogu on 21 March 2003.

### Executive director of the cities' association

Aab was not a member of the X Riigikogu. From 1 April to 21 July 2003 he was adviser and head of the secretariat of the Centre Party's Riigikogu faction. On 22 July 2003 he became executive director (*tegevdirektor*) of the Association of Estonian Cities (Eesti Linnade Liit) and held that post until 13 April 2005. The directorship ended as he became minister of social affairs, from April 2005, in the cabinet of Andrus Ansip; that term in government is treated separately.

### The XI Riigikogu

At the election of 4 March 2007 Aab won a district mandate in electoral district no. 8, covering Järva County and Viljandi County, on the Centre list, with 4,229 votes. Because he was still minister of social affairs in the outgoing government, the mandate was suspended until 5 April 2007. Kersti Sarapuu sat as his substitute from 27 March; her mandate ended on 5 April and Aab's was restored on 6 April. The Centre faction confirmed him as a member on 10 April 2007, noting that he had until then been minister of social affairs.

In the 2007/08 parliamentary year he was deputy chair of the Social Affairs Committee, then chaired by Heljo Pikhof of the Social Democratic Party. As of February 2011 the chair was [Urmas Reinsalu](/people/urmas-reinsalu) and Aab was still deputy chair. Official biographies describe him as a member of the XI Riigikogu, and as deputy chair of that committee, for 2007–2011. On 15 May 2007 the Riigikogu appointed him to the supervisory board of the Estonian Health Insurance Fund by 78 votes to none, with one abstention. From April 2007 he was also deputy chair of the Järva and Viljandi deputies' group, formed to keep members in contact with the district and to support balanced development there through legislation; Tiina Oraste was its chair.

## Minister of Social Affairs

### Appointment in the Ansip cabinet

Jaak Aab became Estonia's minister of social affairs, at the head of the Ministry of Social Affairs, on 13 April 2005, when the Riigikogu swore in the cabinet led by Andrus Ansip. The government joined the Estonian Reform Party, the Estonian Centre Party and the [People's Union of Estonia](/organizations/people-s-union-of-estonia), and it served for 723 days, until 5 April 2007. Aab held the portfolio for the Centre Party throughout, succeeding Marko Pomerants, who had been social minister in Juhan Parts's cabinet from 10 April 2003. A Government Office biography called him a man from Mulgimaa: a former teacher, deputy mayor and mayor of Võhma, a short-term substitute member of the Riigikogu, and, just before the appointment, executive director of the Association of Estonian Cities.

### Policy

In June 2005 Aab wrote that the coalition groups had initiated an amendment to the State Pension Insurance Act, passed with 58 votes, lifting the average old-age pension from 2,446 kroons on 1 April 2005 to 2,726 kroons from 1 July and, on the timetable then set, to 3,008 kroons from 1 April 2006 — nearly 30 percent within a year, on his figures, once rises already planned were counted.

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*Jaak Aab in 2005, during his first months as Minister of Social Affairs.*

Opposition politicians said the extra rise would force the use of reserves or borrowing and would be paid for by younger workers. Aab answered that a pension-fund deficit was already built into the pension reform, that the larger shortfall in 2005–2007 would be covered from the budget, and that the budget would stay in balance. In July 2006 he proposed calculating the individualized social-tax coefficient from the median wage rather than the average, so minimum-wage workers would not be left with only the national pension, then 1,268 kroons, against an average old-age pension above 3,100. Finance Minister Aivar Sõerd said the budget strategy contained no money for that cost, and in March 2007 Aab said the coalition had never passed the draft.

On 15 March 2007 the outgoing cabinet fixed the pension index at 12.2 percent from 1 April, against a little over 9 percent the year before, which Aab tied mainly to a 20 percent rise in social-tax revenue. He also put forward a bill he described as not legally binding, recording the departing government's wish for a further 250-kroon rise in [the base](/organizations/the-base) amount; with both steps, he said, the national pension would rise 24 percent over the year and the average old-age pension 20 percent.

In June 2005 the Riigikogu extended parental benefit by three months from 1 January 2006: to 455 days from the start of maternity leave, instead of 365, for parents who had been employed, and until a child was 14 months old, instead of 11, for parents who had not. In September Aab circulated the regulation on continued payment, including when a parent whose benefit had stopped had to apply again.

On 24 November 2005 the government backed a coalition bill repealing Employment Contracts Act rules that let an employer end a contract on different grounds once a worker turned 65, a provision Aab said the Chancellor of Justice had treated as possibly unconstitutional. In August 2005 former social minister [Eiki Nestor](/people/eiki-nestor) wrote that a hundred days in office had not shortened the treatment queues Aab had inherited, and that the year's social-tax surplus should go first to planned care. In June Aab estimated about 80,000 people without health insurance and said a labour-market bill would cover roughly 10,000 of them during training or work practice. On 1 December 2005 the cabinet approved an HIV/AIDS strategy for 2006–2015; Aab cited 5,011 diagnosed HIV cases, 89 of them AIDS, and said monitoring and treatment should not depend on insurance. On 15 March 2007 the government authorized him to sign a collective agreement with nurses, hospitals and health-workers' unions setting minimum hourly pay, with increases from 1 April.

### Departure from office

At the Riigikogu election of 4 March 2007 the Reform Party won 31 seats, with 153,044 votes, and the Centre Party 29, with 143,518. Aab was returned on a district mandate in district no. 8, Järva and Viljandi counties, with 4,229 votes. Ansip's next cabinet, of Reform, the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union and the Social Democratic Party, took office on 5 April 2007 with Maret Maripuu of Reform as minister of social affairs. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves released the previous government, so Aab's term ended with the change of coalition rather than with a resignation.

## Centre Party leadership

### Secretary general

Aab had been a member of the Estonian Centre Party since 1994. After the XI Riigikogu, the parliament's 2025 short biography lists him as a local-government consultant in Finland from 2012 to 2015. He told *Postimees* in November 2016 that, after his term ended in 2011, he left Estonian politics, worked from 2012 as a consultant in a private company in Finland, and stayed nearly three years. He returned in May 2015, when [Kadri Simson](/people/energy-kadri-simson) made him adviser to the Centre faction on employment and administrative reform; that summer he toured party regions with Simson, Jüri Ratas and Mailis Reps against chairman [Edgar Savisaar](/people/edgar-savisaar).

On 25 September 2016 the board removed secretary general Oudekki Loone and named Aab acting secretary general. The vote was 10 to 3, and the board cited a loss of trust over letters of guarantee issued by her predecessor, Priit Toobal, which it said it had not been told about. Savisaar did not attend the meeting. The board called an extraordinary congress for 5 November in Paide. There Ratas was elected chairman with 654 of 1,011 votes, against 348 for Yana Toom; Savisaar neither stood nor attended. Aab, elected to the new board with 453 votes, was confirmed as secretary general and resigned his board seat, which went to Tallinn City Council chairman Kalev Kallo.

He still held that office, and no Riigikogu seat, when Minister of Public Administration Mihhail Korb resigned on 24 May 2017. *Lääne Elu* reported that Korb had told veterans in Haapsalu he did not favour Estonia's NATO membership and preferred Finland's policy outside the alliance. The coalition partners, the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union and the Social Democratic Party, pressed for him to go. Korb said he supported NATO and European Union membership and that the comparison had been an unfortunate example. Prime Minister Ratas nominated Aab, telling ERR that Aab knew the public-administration field thoroughly and was an expert before he was a politician. The board backed the nomination unanimously on 6 June. President Kersti Kaljulaid appointed him on 8 June. On 12 June the board confirmed Korb as secretary general.

### Advising and the Tallinn Hospital project

Aab left the government on 2 May 2018 after police stopped him for speeding and found residual alcohol. From 1 June Tallinn employed him, without a competition, as adviser to the Tallinn Hospital project in the social and health department, beside project manager Sven Kruup, on a contract through the end of 2018 at a gross salary of 2,500 euros a month. The city said he would draft, with hospital managers, specialists, ministries and the Health Insurance Fund, proposals on dividing work and competence centres, and prepare the design brief for a health centre in Lasnamäe. Deputy mayor Tõnis Mölder, a party colleague, cited Aab's earlier terms as minister. The Riigikogu biography dates the advisory role 2018–2019.

### Local mandates between governments

In the 2017 Tallinn elections Aab received 371 votes and a compensatory council seat, which he declined while a minister. He took the mandate in May 2018 and joined the Centre faction; substitute member Elmar-Johannes Truu lost the seat. The parliamentary biography records that service as 2018–2019. It also states that he was elected to Viljandi City Council in 2009 and again in 2021. On the night of the 17 October 2021 elections, with Aab the Centre list leader in Viljandi and then a minister, ERR reported 157 votes for him and two Centre seats on the 27-member council.

## Minister of Public Administration

### Portfolio and administrative reform

Jaak Aab, of the Estonian Centre Party, became minister of public administration in Prime Minister Jüri Ratas's first cabinet after Mihhail Korb resigned. President Kersti Kaljulaid appointed him on 8 June 2017, and he took the oath before the Riigikogu on 12 June. The post, in the [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance), covered the civil service, state assets and public procurement, the government's internal-audit system, local and regional development, coordination of regional administration, and spatial planning.

The Administrative Reform Act had taken effect on 1 July 2016. In July 2017 the government finished the last merger decisions. Aab later said that, after voluntary mergers, forced mergers and court cases, Estonia would have 79 local governments instead of 213 — 15 cities and 64 rural municipalities. Those with fewer than 5,000 residents had fallen from 169 to 15, and average population had roughly tripled, which he presented as the capacity to take on county-government tasks as well.

A parallel programme was to move state jobs out of Tallinn. In December 2017 Aab set a mid-January deadline for plans to move 13 agency headquarters, on top of proposals for more than 1,000 jobs, and said too few were aimed at smaller county centres. In January 2018 ERR reported that plan partly failing: 20 State Forest Management Centre jobs were to go to Paide and 20 Environmental Inspectorate jobs to Pärnu, while 115 Land Board posts and 129 at the Environment Agency would stay in Tallinn. On 17 January Arto Aas, a Reform Party MP and former holder of the post, said many moves were "only on paper." Aab called the figures concrete plans, not paper numbers, including 204 jobs for Tartu. On 13 February 2020, in a later term, he wrote that 1,037.5 posts had left the capital — 253 to Tartu County, 129.5 to Ida-Viru County and 117 to Pärnu County — and that the programme, which had drawn sharp criticism, was continuing through remote work and state houses.

### The 2018 resignation

On 11 March 2018 police stopped Aab near Lõunakeskus in Tartu. He was driving at 73 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, and a breath test showed 0.14 milligrams of alcohol per litre, or 0.28 per mille in blood. Estonia applies a zero-tolerance rule to drink-driving. He said he had drunk with friends the evening before and had wrongly assumed he was sober.

He kept the stop private for more than a month. On 17 April he said a one-month licence suspension had arrived the week before, and that he had not wanted to overshadow budget talks. He told Ratas on the Saturday and that morning asked to resign. Ratas accepted the same day "with a heavy heart." The letter was to go to Kaljulaid after the Centre board named a successor; the prime minister had up to a month to forward it. The roadside protocol, from Aab's own statement, listed his workplace as the government, but a typing error later recorded him as a Riigikogu employee. Police called it a human error that did not affect the penalty.

Aab stayed until 2 May 2018, when Kaljulaid released him and Janek Mäggi took the oath, alongside Riina Sikkut as health and labour minister. The ministry paid Aab more than €27,000 in severance with his final pay. In May 2019, back in office, he said he would repay it in instalments: officials had treated the payment as lawful, but the Government Office later held that a minister who resigned of his own accord was not entitled to it.

### Second and third terms

The government site listed him as minister of public administration from 29 April 2019, in Ratas's second cabinet. On 20 March 2020, in the COVID-19 emergency, Ratas put him in charge of disinfectants and personal protective equipment outside health care and social welfare, for first responders, social workers and risk groups, with the State Shared Service Centre assisting. Procurement for health-care providers stayed with the Health Board.

On 25 November 2020 Kaljulaid approved him as minister of education and research in place of Mailis Reps, ending that term. He returned to public administration on 26 January 2021 in the first cabinet of Kaja Kallas. On 3 June 2022 Kallas asked President [Alar Karis](/people/alar-karis) to dismiss the Centre ministers, Aab included, after the party helped vote down a government preschool-education bill, and the president released them that day. Finance Minister Keit Pentus-Rosimannus covered the portfolio in the interim. Riina Solman of Isamaa took the post when the next government was appointed and sworn in on 18 July 2022.

## Minister of Education and Research

### Appointment after Mailis Reps

Jaak Aab became minister of education and research on 25 November 2020 in the government of Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, replacing Mailis Reps. Reps, also of the Estonian Centre Party, resigned on 20 November after Õhtuleht reported that she had used an official ministry car for non-official purposes, chiefly to take some of her six children to and from school and kindergarten. She wrote that she was taking political responsibility for mistakes in balancing work and family life; Ratas had backed her until she resigned that evening, the third ministerial resignation of the month. President Kersti Kaljulaid released her the next day on his proposal.

On 24 November the Centre Party proposed moving Aab from public administration and naming Riigikogu member Anneli Ott in his place. Kaljulaid approved Aab the next day after an online conversation during a working visit to Hiiumaa. Aab did not repeat the ministerial oath, having already sworn it; Ott took hers before the Riigikogu. On ETV's *Ringvaade* the day before, he said teachers' pay would not stay unchanged for four years, and that his first reply when offered the post had been to ask Ratas whether a rise would be supported.

### The short tenure

The term coincided with the second wave of the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) in Estonia. On 10 December Aab recommended that schools stay on distance learning until the winter holidays, with school managers deciding consultations for pupils who had fallen behind and how missed lessons would be made up. He said infections were rising nationwide, including among younger children, and hoped contact teaching could resume after 10 January. On 23 December he said schools outside Harju County and Ida-Viru County could likely return from 11 January, with only some grades back in those two counties, and that higher-education examinations and consultations were then allowed in person. On 29 December he announced partial distance learning in Harju and Ida-Viru until at least 17 January—grades 1 to 4, 9 and 12 in school, the rest remote—and contact teaching for all classes in the other 13 counties from 11 January. The government was to review the rules on 7 January, and he said every grade in the two counties could return only once their infection rate fell below 300 per 100,000 inhabitants.

In the early hours of 13 January Ratas resigned after prosecutors and the Internal Security Service opened an investigation into a €39 million KredEx loan to the Porto Franco development in Tallinn; Centre secretary-general Mihhail Korb was among those suspected. His resignation brought down the Centre–[Conservative People's Party](/organizations/conservative-people-s-party) of Estonia–Isamaa government, which continued as a caretaker, and Kaljulaid asked Estonian Reform Party leader Kaja Kallas to form the next one. Still in the education post on 19 January, Aab said that, in the plan confirmed by the Ministry of Social Affairs, teachers were grouped with other frontline workers for vaccination, older teachers first, without a separate queue for large and small schools. On 26 January Kaljulaid appointed Kallas's first cabinet; Liina Kersna became minister of education and research, Aab returned to public administration, and the ministers took the oath in the Riigikogu that morning, ending his education term after about two months.

## Elections and the XV Riigikogu

### The 2019 and 2023 elections

Aab stood for the Estonian Centre Party in Riigikogu electoral district no. 8, covering Järva County and Viljandi County, in both the 2019 and 2023 elections. In 2019, as candidate 1002, he received 2,227 votes: 503 in Järva County, 1,162 in Viljandi County, 562 electronic and none from abroad. The district had 37,448 valid votes and seven seats, a simple quota of 5,349.71. The Centre list took 6,253 votes, 16.7 percent, a little more than one quota, and the district mandate went to Aab, its leading candidate. The XIV Riigikogu record enters the seat as K/8, 2,227 votes, *rm* (*ringkonnamandaat*). His credentials were suspended on 24 April 2019 when he became minister of public administration, remained suspended through his later terms as minister of education and research and again of public administration, and were restored on 4 June 2022.

In 2023 he was Centre candidate 987 in the same district and received 1,562 votes: 281 in Järva County, 661 in Viljandi County, 593 electronic and 27 from other districts. Turnout was 61.6 percent, against 61.2 percent in 2019. The Centre list won 4,021 votes, 10.2 percent of 39,297 valid votes, short of a quota, so the seat was not a district mandate. The nationwide compensation round gave him a compensation mandate, 90th by comparative figure, at 8,150.5204, equal to 0.2782 of the district quota.

### Committees

On 6 June 2022 Aab joined the Finance Committee and was elected its deputy chair, a post he still held in the XV Riigikogu in October 2023. He left it on 4 March 2024. ERR reported that he had moved in early January from the opposition Centre Party to the coalition Social Democratic Party, and that deputy chairs of standing committees are by custom held by the opposition; Andrei Korobeinik was elected in his place the same day, and Annely Akkermann of the Estonian Reform Party was re-elected chair.

On 14 May 2024 the Economic Affairs Committee chose a new chair after Priit Lomp stepped down. Aab, an unaffiliated member although a Social Democrat, was elected chair, and Centre Party member Aleksei Jevgrafov remained deputy chair. He resigned on 7 April 2025, telling *Delfi* that a change of coalition meant the leadership would be rearranged and that he would not block it; Marek Reinaas of [Estonia 200](/organizations/estonia-200) said he would stand. The Riigikogu's short biographies of 19 June 2025 list Reinaas as chair and Aab as an ordinary member outside any faction. The same volume's biographical note records the finance deputy chairmanship as 2022–2024 and the economic chairmanship as 2024–2025.

### Legislative work

As finance deputy chair, after a Centre meeting with Finance Minister Mart Võrklaev in July 2023, Aab called the proposed motor-vehicle tax a thin cover for revenue toward a Reform Party income-tax change he put at about €500 million. He said low-paid rural residents, and disabled people who depend on a car, would be hit hardest, and that the levy should fall on above-average vehicles and be paired with public transport rather than with the end of free public transport. In October 2023 he criticised the draft 2024 state budget for having no programme to restart the economy: investment was being left to European Union money while municipalities and firms faced a co-financing share up about 30 percent and could no longer borrow. He contrasted a value-added-tax rise, which he said would fall on people who already had little, with a graduated income tax or taxes on assets.

In April 2025 he wrote that Estonia had consumed 8 TWh of electricity in 2024 and produced 5.4 TWh, that wind capacity was about 700 MW against about 8,000 MW in Finland, and that the last wind-farm building permit dated from 2020. At the 17 June 2025 sitting that passed Competition Act amendments by 66 votes to 16, he said competition in essential goods and services was limited, prices unreasonably high and dominant firms' profits large in a small market, and that an earlier draft using administrative fines would have been more effective.

## Change of party

### Leaving the Centre Party

Aab's resignation was part of a wider split in the Estonian Centre Party after Mihhail Kõlvart defeated [Tanel Kiik](/people/tanel-kiik) for the chair at an extraordinary congress in mid-September 2023. That autumn MPs Jaanus Karilaid and Tõnis Mölder joined Isamaa, and Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski joined the Estonian Reform Party.

On 5 January 2024 the business register recorded six further resignations from the Centre group in the Riigikogu: Aab, Kiik, former secretary-general Andre Hanimägi, Ester Karuse, Enn Eesmaa and Kersti Sarapuu. At a press conference that morning Kiik said the party had not been one team in the hundred days since the congress. He cited rivalry among regional bodies and disregard on the board and, as ERR reported, MEP Yana Toom's help for pro-Russian activists, some expelled from Estonia, and for their court cases. The six, he said, had discussed leaving together only from mid-December, and the argument was about "content", not the nationality card Kõlvart had alleged.

Aab, a member since September 1994, said they had tried to work on national questions "but have not received the necessary support from the current chair and management", and that "a certain component of the board, and also of the Riigikogu faction, are not at all interested in issues concerning this country." He wanted another decade in politics but saw no place for it in the Centre Party. Karuse and Hanimägi said the old team could not continue. Eesmaa said he would join no other party; Sarapuu, who missed the press conference, was described the same way. From 16 seats in March 2023, the faction fell to seven, the chamber's smallest.

### The Social Democratic Party in parliament

Aab, Kiik, Hanimägi and Karuse joined the Social Democratic Party within days; Eesmaa and Sarapuu did not. On 9 January 2024 ERR reported that the four were officially joining that day, along with about ten other people. A later account placed Aab's entry five days after the resignation. SDE, chaired by [Lauri Läänemets](/people/lauri-laanemets), was in coalition with Reform and Estonia 200.

They did not enter SDE's Riigikogu group. Under the parliament's rules, a member may leave a faction during a term but cannot join another, a limit in place since a decision after the VII Riigikogu. An MP may still change party and vote with another faction. Biographies of the XV Riigikogu current on 19 June 2025 listed Aab as a Social Democrat, a party-board member and unaffiliated, with Kiik, Hanimägi, Karuse, Eesmaa and Sarapuu.

In February 2024 the Harju County branch elected Aab chair unanimously; Jüri Ross, the previous chair, stayed on the regional board. Before a congress in Paide on 16 March the branch backed Läänemets as leader and Kiik and Eve Kislov as vice-chairs. Aab said he was grateful for the trust "since I have only been in the party for a month."

### Jõelähtme and the 2025 local elections

In the October 2025 municipal elections Reform won eight seats on the 19-member council of Jõelähtme Parish, in Harju County. Isamaa took four, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia three, and the Social Democrats and the Centre Party two each. Andrus Umboja, Reform's mayor since 2009, said Reform had invited both its partner, the Social Democrats, and the Centre Party.

On 11 November 2025 Reform and the Social Democrats agreed to continue together, with ten seats. The deal nominated Aab as council chair and Umboja as mayor; Reform would name two deputy mayors and SDE one. Umboja was re-elected mayor on 4 December by 10 votes. *Harju Elu* reported that the council elected Aab chair on 28 November.

On 2 September 2026 Aab, a Social Democrat, had signed the Riigikogu nomination of Chancellor of Justice [Ülle Madise](/people/ulle-madise) for president but missed the ballot because his flight was changed. SDE's communications chief told ERR the change was outside his control and that he still supported Madise. She was elected the same day with 71 votes from 78 ballots and seven blank papers, above the 68 required, so there was no later round. She was to take office on 12 October 2026.

## Personal life

### Family

When Aab became minister of social affairs in 2005, his wife was Kaie Aab, a primary-school teacher at Võhma Gymnasium, and they had two daughters. The government biography described Kristel, then 24, as a buyer at the clothing firm Baltika Grupp, and Karen, then 20, as a law student at Akadeemia Nord and a project manager at the law firm Dussen. On weekdays he lived in a rented flat in Tallinn with his elder daughter; at weekends he stayed at the family house in Võhma.

In October 2008, as a member of the Riigikogu, he said a divorce from Kaie was pending. He had met a teacher named Oksana, sixteen years his junior, about three years earlier, and they had lived together since the spring. In November 2016 he said the marriage had lasted more than twenty years, that he had been the greater initiator of the separation, and that the relationship with Oksana had continued for several years without becoming lasting. He also said he was already a grandfather five times over. A 2020 profile dated the separation from Kaie to 2008.

Marian Kullerkupp, who taught solfège and music history at the Kadrina school of arts and worked in its preschool, met him online on 4 July 2016. They made the relationship public that year and married on 4 July 2020. By the wedding she worked at the Pääsupesa kindergarten in Loo, in Jõelähtme Parish, and the Estonian Centre Party published congratulations. Aab told *Kroonika* that he had been alone for nine years and had begun to doubt he would meet anyone else. The Riigikogu short biographies of 19 June 2025, drawn from members' questionnaires, list him as married, with two children and five grandchildren.

### Public profile

The 2005 curriculum vitae rated his Russian as very good in speech and writing, his Finnish as good in speech and writing, his German as satisfactory and his English as elementary. It listed gardening, reading, occasional running and cycling, televised sport, history and quizzes, including an appearance on the Estonian television quiz *Kes tahab saada miljonäriks?*, and said the family liked the zoo and travel in Estonia. In 2016 he and Kullerkupp, both former ballroom-dance students, were taking a Sunday class in Kadrina. They attended the presidential reception for the republic's 102nd anniversary at the Ugala theatre in Viljandi. The 2025 Riigikogu booklet gives his interests as history, literature and sport. In August 2025 he said he had lived for more than seven years in Koogi village, Jõelähtme Parish.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/jaak-aab