Permanent Representative

H.E. Mr. Rein Tammsaar is the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Estonia to the United Nations since August 2022.

Ambassador Rein Tammsaar was born in Tallinn in 1968. In 1992, he graduated from the Tallinn Pedagogical University and he has a master’s degree in political science. He also attended a PhD programme at the University of Tartu and graduated from the Estonian School of Diplomacy and the Spanish School of Diplomacy.

Rein Tammsaar joined the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1994. He started in various positions at the Political, Policy Planning and Public Diplomacy departments as well as at the Estonian Embassy in Moscow. Between 2004 and 2009, Tammsaar worked at the Policy Unit of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Javier Solana and from 2011 to 2015, he worked at the European Union’s delegation in Moscow. From 2015 to 2017, he was the foreign policy adviser to the prime minister of Estonia and from 2017 to 2018, he was the director general of the Policy Planning Department.

More recently, in 2018 and 2019, he represented Estonia at the European Union’s Political and Security Committee (PSC) and in 2020, he was Estonia’s permanent representative to the European Union. Before his appointment as Estonia’s permanent representative to the UN, Tammsaar worked as the undersecretary for Political Affairs at Estonian MFA since 2020.

The Permanent Representative speaks English, Spanish, French and Russian. He is married and has two children. His hobbies are football, fishing, gym and travel.