The Riigikogu heard the annual report by the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs and passed an Act
At today’s sitting, the plenary assembly of the Riigikogu passed the Act on Amendments to the Vocational Education Institutions Act and heard the annual reports from Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta on the fundamental principles of criminal policy and legislative policy. In addition, the Public Libraries Bill passed its first reading.
An Act was passed
The Act on Amendments to the Vocational Educational Institutions Act (843 SE), initiated by the Cultural Affairs Committee, specifies the regulation concerning beginning teachers.
The Act allows vocational educational institutions to enter into fixed-term employment contracts of up to three years with persons who are hired as vocational teachers and are acquiring teacher certification, and with teachers of general education subjects who are studying for teacher training at a higher education level or are acquiring or hold a master’s degree or equivalent qualification. As with teachers who meet the qualification requirements, the minimum wage for teachers will also apply to them.
The Act will allow schools to be more flexible in recruiting beginning teachers in a situation where there are no candidates meeting the qualification requirements. This will support the emergence of new vocational teachers and help mitigate the risks arising from the ageing of teachers and from labour shortages.
68 members of the Riigikogu voted in favour of passing the Act and five voted against.
A Bill passed the first reading
The Public Libraries Bill (877 SE), initiated by the Government, passed its first reading. It will reform the library network. According to the bill, all county libraries will be brought into a single public library system, and a unified all-Estonian database will be introduced.
While the library network is currently centred around 15 county libraries, the bill will support all public libraries of local governments uniformly and equally. The goal is to strengthen the integrity of the library network, the availability of services, and user convenience. To improve user convenience, it is planned to introduce a single database instead of the current three outdated systems, which will be joined by the National Library, research and specialist libraries as well as public libraries, and school libraries if they so desire.
The organisation of the public library network remains the responsibility of local governments, but it will become more flexible for them. According to the bill, the organization of the library network must be based on the number of residents, population density and structure, as well as local needs. While 58 employees from 15 county libraries have so far been the central coordinators, now the National Library of Estonia which will take over the national tasks in stages will become the central manager. Current library staff will also be able to apply for the posts to be created.
The tasks of the National Library will include, among other things, the creation, management, and development of nationwide services, the collection and analysis of reports, as well as professional consulting and the coordination of training. The National Library will also take over the task of acquisition of collections. Public libraries will be able to order publications themselves using funds allocated by local governments.
The main part of the Act is scheduled to enter into force on 1 January 2027, with some amendments entering into force by 1 July 2027. The transition is planned to take place in phases so that local governments, libraries, and the National Library would have time to prepare for the changes.
Madis Kallas from the Social Democratic Party Group and Tõnis Lukas from Isamaa Parliamentary Group took the floor during the debate.
The Social Democratic Party Group and Isamaa Parliamentary Group moved to reject the Bill at the first reading. 28 members of the Riigikogu supported the motion and 41 were against. The first reading of the Bill was concluded.
The annual reports by the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs were heard
Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta gave the Riigikogu an overview of the implementation of the fundamentals of criminal policy in 2025. The Minister said: “Circumstances change, and so, with your permission, I will focus in today’s presentation on four topics where we can currently say that we do indeed have areas of concern which we can and should improve.” According to Pakosta, these issues are the following: respect for the presumption of innocence; children dropping out of support networks; an increasing desire in society to stray from evidence-based criminal policy; and overcriminalisation and excessive punishment, which drain the resources of investigation agencies at the expense of helping actual victims.
Speaking of the presumption of innocence, the Minister emphasised: “Article 22 of our Constitution clearly states that no one may be deemed guilty of a criminal offence until a judgment of conviction by a court against them enters into force.” She noted, however, that unfortunately we were witnessing widespread violations of this principle, and that had caused unnecessary suffering to innocent people. Pakosta pointed out that, among others, officials, representatives of the state, and the media had also violated the presumption of innocence. “We also see problems with the pressure fuelled by the media to condemn people and cast them out to the margins of society even before a court judgment has entered into force. This peculiar desire for vigilante justice and the urge to convict someone before a judgment of conviction by a court has, let’s be honest, become more widespread in society in recent times. Unfortunately, this has also brought about the first victims of physical violence,” Pakosta said. In conclusion of this point, the Minister underlined once again that society would be significantly healthier if it followed the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Pakosta described the need for early support for children as follows: “The younger a child is when they receive the help they need, the more effective that help is and the greater the certainty that it will actually work.” Regarding trends in offences committed by children, she noted that last year minors had committed 4252 offences, and the number had increased in comparison to 2024. As a solution, the Minister proposed data-based intervention: “Under the leadership of the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, we have launched a project in cooperation with other ministries that uses artificial intelligence. The aim of the project is to ensure that no young person, no child is left without help due to falling between different areas of administration.” According to Pakosta, the goal of the project, which is named Mudila, is to prevent children from getting stuck in bureaucracy.
Regarding the effectiveness of penal policy, Pakosta highlighted the decline in the number of prisoners. “In Estonia, the number of prisoners has decreased by approximately 1300 over the past decade.” Pakosta also emphasised the impact of reducing recidivism: “In Estonia, too, there is a clear difference in the recidivism rate between prisoners who are released from prison directly, closing the doors behind them, and the prisoners released through probation. In the first case, the recidivism rate is 25%, and in the second case it is 16%.”
Regarding over-criminalization, Pakosta said that a mere technical error on paper, which had caused no harm or benefit to anyone, should not lead to fear of imprisonment. The minister concluded her report with a call to allocate the resources of investigators more wisely. “There are issues we should address to ensure that our investigators can truly focus on actual crimes and contribute their resources to swiftly achieving just punishments to all criminals in Estonia.”
Mart Helme from the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Group and Madis Timpson from the Reform Party Parliamentary Group took the floor during the debate. Andre Hanimägi took the floor on behalf of the Social Democratic Party Group and Peeter Ernits on behalf of the Centre Party Parliamentary Group.
In her second presentation today, the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs introduced the implementation of the principles of good legislative drafting in 2025. The minister emphasized that the past year had been marked by clear progress in reducing bureaucracy. “The one-in-one-out principle, which very many were sceptical about, became the norm and actually yielded results,” Liisa Pakosta said. According to her, that meant that ministries had no longer casually devised new requirements.
Pakosta pointed out that, compared to 2024, the proportion of draft legislation in which the administrative burden had decreased had grown significantly, and the burden balancing rule had been applied in nearly one-third of the draft legislation. The minister mentioned the revision of regulations as another major positive step. “In Estonia, there were 4,009 regulations published in the State Gazette by the state, and in fact, every fifth one of them was either repealed or amended,” Pakosta said. She added that, as a result of the revision, all regulations had been assigned a responsible authority which made it easier for people to receive explanations and find the responsible authority.
There are still shortcomings in the quality of legislation, particularly with regard to constitutionality analysis. We still see that constitutionality analyses are either completely absent from draft legislation or are merely a formality. According to an analysis by the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs the proportion of draft legislation with deficiencies was as high as two-thirds in 2025. The minister also referred to an independent expert assessment, in which the authors emphasized that, before embarking on legislative action, it must be clearly determined whether the problem actually exists and whether it could be resolved by other means. Pakosta quoted experts: “When an Estonian hears the word ‘problem,’ they sit down at a desk and start drafting an Act.”
Pakosta also explained the principles on the basis of which the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs left draft legislation without approval. “We have four reasons, which we have stated loudly and clearly, for not approving a bill,” the minister said. Among them, she mentioned overly stringent transposition of European Union law, inadequate constitutionality analysis, conflict with data protection requirements, and disregard of the administrative burden balancing rule. She emphasized the importance of data protection in the age of artificial intelligence: “The use of people’s data by the state is an exceptionally great responsibility and data protection rules must be followed as strictly and seriously as possible.”
In addition, the Minister discussed the transposition of European Union law and noted that previous regulations had often increased the administrative burden, but that trend was changing. “The European Union itself has also taken on reducing administrative burden,” Pakosta said.
In the concluding part of her presentation, Pakosta emphasized the role of the Riigikogu in ensuring good legislative drafting and the need to move away from an automatic legislative reflex. “After all, the purpose of legislation is to regulate only when no other option can be of help in any way,” the minister said.
Madis Timpson from the Reform Party took the floor during the debate.
The deliberation was adjourned due to the end of the working hours of the sitting, and the debate will continue at tomorrow’s sitting.
The sitting ended at 1.56 p.m.
Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)
Video recording will be available to watch later on the Riigikogu YouTube channel.
Riigikogu Press Service
Maiki Vaikla
+372 631 6456, +372 5666 9508
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