Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of ESharp Magazine.

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This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Kaya Thail.

Kaya Tile is the permanent representative of Estonia to the European Union.

Kaya, here we talk about obviously the priorities and the objectives of the Estonian

Presidency, which lasts until the end of 2017.

But before we do that, Kaya, I'd like to know how much of a challenge was it for the

Estonian government and people like yourself to take over this presidency six months earlier, of course, because the UK gave up its right almost to have its own presidency?

How much of a challenge was it to take over six months earlier than planned?

Well, I would use the word it was a shock.

A shock.

Apart from being a challenge, obviously.

But the thing is that, first of all, the whole Brexit issue, of course, came as a shock to the

Estonian people.

We have always thought that the UK was a very strong ally in many issues where we shared our basic positions.

And obviously anybody is said to see the UK leaving.

Unfortunately, this is the effect of life by now and we are all getting used to this.

And so, of course, as Germany also got used to this presidency being jump started and although we are

planners and we hate how our plans interacted but as for the real challenge

after this initial shock it turned out to be easier than

we were afraid of. We really were quite well prepared already and I in the end sensed some

relief among my colleagues saying that, well, at least it will also be our sooner and we had

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