The Reform-Center coalition wants to make policy-making more transparent and plans to draft legislation to do so, negotiators said after Thursday s discussions. This includes looking into the funding sources of policy-making NGOs, establishing guidelines over conflicts of interest and making ministers advisers declare their interests.
On Thursday corruption prevention was discussed between the Reform and Center parties negotiators.
Speaking at a press conference in the evening, Chairman of the Reform Party Kaja Kallas said: We are developing guidelines for ministers to avoid conflicts of interest, we will come up with a bill that also stipulates that ministers advisers must declare their interests so that the picture is public and clear.
Ministerial positions have not yet been decided during coalition negotiation talks, the Center Party s chief negotiator Mailis Reps has said, and she does not see a role for herself in the coalition.
Speaking on ETV current affairs show Esimene studio on Tuesday evening, Reps said the coalition has not started allocating minister seats yet and denied the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice will not be held by the Center Party. Such exclusions make the upcoming allocating more difficult. Kallas has said multiple times that the allocating the seats will come later. The reason is that when you do it proportionately, then excluding something means raising the stakes for another position. There are the power ministries, ministries of finance, soft ministries and small ministries and they have to be divided proportionately when we speak about an equal union, Reps explained.
Jüri Ratas second term as prime minister landed him in a similar situation of being surrounded on all sides experienced by his predecessor at the helm of the Center Party, Edgar Savisaar, Meelis Oidsalu finds in Vikerraadio s daily comment.
Political scientist Tõnis Saarts published a manifestly dashing book review titled Scholarly democracy. No, thank you last year in which he showcased the postulate of two Dutch social scientists according to which the Western political elite finds itself in an education bubble where professional politicians sporting myriad university diplomas are becoming increasingly alienated from the people and the elite s isolation is causing existential problems for representative democracy.
ERR News looks back at 2020 which was, if nothing else, an eventful year.
As no one needs reminding, 2020 was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic and its knock-on effects on everyday life and the economy, several EKRE-led scandals and the upcoming marriage referendum.
But other, more positive events also occurred, such as Estonia taking up its first non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The ERR News team has looked back over the top stories of 2020.
January
The year started with Estonia formally commencing its two-year stint as a non-permanent member on the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Estonia had been awarded the post in June the previous year, and joined Niger, Tunisia, Vietnam and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as non-permanent members for 2020-2021.
The Riigikogu did not support a proposal by the opposition to reject the marriage referendum bill on Monday and the draft passed its first reading after a four-hour debate.
The proposal submitted by the opposition Reform Party and Social Democratic Party (SDE) to reject the bill was voted down with 48 votes for and 51 against.
Isamaa MPs Siim Kiisler, Üllar Saaremäe and Viktoria Ladõnskaja-Kubits voted in favor of rejecting the bill and Isamaa member Mihhail Lotman abstained.
Imre Sooäär, (Center) who has been critical of the marriage referendum, voted against the rejection of the bill. Mihhail Korb (Center) abstained.