The Riigikogu heard the presentation by the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs
At today's sitting, the Riigikogu heard the report by the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs concerning the implementation of the long-term national development strategy. It stressed the preservation of the freedom of the Estonian people and the country as the greatest task.
“This is the most important task for 2035 and beyond: that we have free people in a free country,“ Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta said in the Riigikogu.
According to her, the long-term development strategy “Estonia 2035” provides for ensuring security and safety and improving crisis preparedness, and the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs has several tasks in this area. “It is also our task to build a more efficient state, so that there is no need to ask for more taxpayer money, but so that everything collected is used as efficiently as possible to improve the lives of the Estonian people and to our most important insurance, namely national defence,” she said.
Pakosta’s presentation focused on the work of the courts and on the planned extensive judicial reform. “This is necessary for several reasons, including national defence. In the event of a possible large-scale crisis, we need to ensure that the judiciary is highly and rapidly mobile and that all the tools of the rule of law can be used even in a war situation,” the minister said. According to her, at the same time, changes in the judicial system are also necessary because there has been a generational change in the courts and judicial procedures have changed significantly.
Speaking about the problems that needed to be solved through judicial reform, Pakosta referred to the unequal distribution of workload between courts and different regions, which in turn meant longer processing times for people. “The use of courtrooms also varies widely. In addition, we also need to introduce modern tools, including artificial intelligence in the preparatory work,” she said. She added that, therefore, there were plans to change, among other things, the model for the administration of courts, to streamline the structure, and to accelerate procedures and technological development.
According to Pakosta, artificial intelligence is seen as an opportunity to better help people and operate more efficiently based on data. “From digital forensics, which allows new connections to be found in evidence that the human eye might not notice, to the extension of automated administrative procedures to make it as easy as possible for people to conduct their affairs with the state and local government,” the minister said. According to her, in order for Estonian people’s data to be used securely in artificial intelligence, a large country-specific language model will need to be trained.
Pakosta added that Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine had been going on for more than 11 years, the last three of them in full scale, and although the whole country was at war, the country was functioning. “Democracy is also functioning at a fairly maximum level. Especially when we consider that this is a war situation. In order for digital governance services to also function in any situation in Estonia, we must have them in readiness so that the Estonian digital governance would remain operational in any situation. We have a comprehensive work plan for this as well,” the minister assured in her presentation.
Urmas Reinsalu from Isamaa Parliamentary Group, Toomas Uibo from Estonia 200 Parliamentary Group, Andrei Korobeinik from the Centre Party Parliamentary Group, Valdo Randpere from the Reform Party Parliamentary Group and Anti Poolamets from the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Parliamentary Group took the floor during the debate. Andres Hanimägi made a speech on behalf of the Social Democratic Party Group.
A Bill was dropped from the proceedings
The Riigikogu rejected the Bill on Amendments to the Public Transport Act (578 SE), initiated by Member of the Riigikogu Kalle Grünthal. It was intended to change the requirements set for taxi services, to exclude the operation of “pirate taxis” and thus ensure better and safer service for customers. Among other things, the Bill provided that taxi service providers must hold a document certifying that they have at least B1 level Estonian language proficiency.
The Economic Affairs Committee moved to reject the Bill at the first reading. 45 members of the Riigikogu supported the rejection and 11 were against it. Thus, the Bill was dropped from the legislative proceedings.
Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)
Video recording will be available to watch later on the Riigikogu YouTube channel.
Riigikogu Press Service
Karin Kangro
+372 631 6356, +372 520 0323
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