[10] By Ilves's own admission, he speaks Estonian with a comparatively strong American accent, on account of spending his formative and young adult years in America and Germany.

[8] From 1985 to 1993, Ilves worked in Munich, Germany as a journalist for Radio Free Europe, being the head of its Estonian desk since 1988.

After the March 1999 parliamentary election he became foreign minister again, serving until 2002, when the so-called Triple Alliance collapsed.

[16] In 2015, it was announced that Ilves had agreed to join the group of advisers to the World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

[17] During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union.

In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN.

[citation needed] Beginning in 2016, Ilves has been co-chairing The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology.

On 29 August, Ilves was the only candidate in the second and the third round of the presidential election in Riigikogu, the Parliament of Estonia (he was supported by an electoral coalition consisting of the governing Reform Party plus the Social Democrats and the Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica which form the parliamentary opposition).

On 13 September 2006, a broad spectrum of 80 well-known intellectuals published a declaration in support of Ilves' candidacy.

He received support from 73 members of the legislature, and is the first candidate to be elected in the first round since Estonia regained independence in 1991.

[25] In January 2016 he married Ieva Kupče, the head of the Cybersecurity Division in the Defense Ministry of Latvia.

[28] He maintains a Twitter account, personally posting on a regular basis to comment on both current events and his own interests, usually in English.

Until the early 2000s, Andres Ilves was head of the Afghanistan bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague, Czech Republic.