At today’s remote-participation sitting of the Riigikogu, the Bill that will amend the bases for calculating parental benefit in order to support families with children where the amount of parental benefit will decrease in connection with unemployment due to the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease passed the second reading.

According to the Bill on Amendments to the Family Benefits Act and the Employment Contracts Act (300 SE), initiated by the Government, if a person is unemployed due to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, and is registered as unemployed, this will not affect the amount of their parental benefit. Under the Bill, the period when the person is registered as unemployed with the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund will be excluded from the period of the calculation of the amount of parental benefit. According to the current Act, only the time for which a certificate of incapacity for work is issued to the person is excluded from the calculation period.

The Bill provides that the changing of the bases for calculating the amount of parental benefit is a measure for a specified period that is applied in the calculation of the amount of the parental benefit granted for children born in the period 1 January 2021 to 21 December 2023. As the amount of parental benefit is calculated on the basis of the calculation period that is 21 months before the birth of the child from which the period of pregnancy, that is, nine months has been deducted, the period from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2023 remains within the calculation period of parental benefit in the case of children born in this period. According to the explanatory memorandum, the affected target group comprises approximately three per cent of the families who have children.

The Social Affairs Committee had decided to include provisions in the Bill that regulate the payment of family benefits and the use of paternity leave in the case of stillborn children and the payment of family allowances for 16–19-year-old children at the beginning of the academic year.

Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)

The video recording of the sitting will be available on the Riigikogu YouTube channel.
(Please note that the recording will be uploaded with a delay.)

Riigikogu Press Service
Merilin Kruuse
Phone: +372 631 6592, +372 510 6179
E-mail: [email protected]
Questions: [email protected]