Estonia’s leaders have apologized after the country’s interior minister called the new prime minister of neighboring Finland, Sanna Marin, “a sales girl.”

The interior minister, Mart Helme, 70, who is the leader of the far-right Estonian Conservative People’s Party, made the comment about Ms. Marin, who is 34, during a Sunday morning radio talk show as part of a larger tirade against the center-left government of Finland, which he said was trying to destroy the country from within.

“Now we can see that a sales girl has become prime minister and some other street activist and uneducated person has also become a member of the government,” Mr. Helme said, according to a translation from Finland’s state broadcaster YLE. He claimed that Finland was led by “Reds” who “are now desperately trying to liquidate Finland, making it a Euro-province.”

Ms. Marin has spoken with pride about her working-class roots and about her rise from a low-income household to become the world’s youngest national leader. On Monday, she responded indirectly, on Twitter, to Mr. Helme’s comment.