“Despite repeated expressions of concern from friends and allies, the Georgian parliament has taken an alarming and repressive step that undermines democracy and contradicts its stated goal of Western integration,” the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees said in the Joint Statement. According to them, it is a parliament’s role to reflect the will of its people, and Georgians have unequivocally rejected this Kremlin-inspired law as incompatible with their identity, European values, and democratic principles. “Simply put, this so-called ‘foreign agent’ law mirrors the policies of Vladimir Putin, who continues to illegally occupy 20 percent of Georgia’s territory.”
The Chairs of Foreign Affairs Committees pointed out that respected Georgian organizations such as Transparency International (TI Georgia), the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), and the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), were playing pivotal roles in Georgia’s path towards Euro-Atlantic integration. “This law flies in the face of such worthy efforts and serves as a direct assault on civil society and independent media – elements fundamental to any democracy. The United States and Europe will continue to support them as their leadership and vision for Georgia exemplify true patriotism, in stark contrast to the 84 members of Parliament who aligned themselves with Russia in yesterday’s vote,” they said.
The Chairs of Foreign Affairs Committees underlined that they would never abandon the Georgian people who had bravely displayed their steadfast commitment to democratic values through peaceful resistance. “Nor will we hesitate to hold accountable those responsible for enacting this Russian-style law and for the brutal targeting of nonviolent demonstrators, including by Bidzina Ivanishvili and his cronies. To the Georgian people, we declare: You are not alone,” they added.
The Chairs of Foreign Affairs Committees of the parliaments of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Parliament have joined the Joint Statement. Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) Marko Mihkelson signed the statement on behalf of Estonia.
Mihkelson and Edelstein discussed issues related to both the Middle East region and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. They consider the impact of these conflicts to be global and think that their resolution requires broader international cooperation.
Mihkelson also spoke of the Statement unanimously adopted by the Riigikogu that condemned Hamas terrorist attacks and the war started by Hamas against Israel.
In this Statement, the Riigikogu expressed its condolences to the State of Israel, its people, and the families of the victims of the terrorist attack, and acknowledged the efforts made to free the hostages, as a result of which it had been possible to release part of the hostages. The Parliament also affirmed that the State of Israel had the right and the duty to defend itself until the end of the Hamas terrorist attacks, the release of all hostages and the capture of the planners and perpetrators of the 7 October massacre, so that terror against Israel and its people would not happen again.
Edelstein thanked for the invitation to visit Estonia and attend the Lennart Meri Conference.
Besides visiting the Riigikogu, Edelstein will have meetings with Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna and Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur during his stay in Tallinn.
Photos Erik Peinar / Chancellery of the Riigikogu)
NordenBladet —Today, May 15, an urban battle exercise took place in Pärnu, where reservists and members of the Estonian Defence League participating in Spring Storm practiced defending the harbour area together with the allies. The Spring Storm exercise integrates various hybrid threats to create challenges as close to real-life scenarios as …
NordenBladet —As part of Exercise Spring Storm, the Defence Forces and the Rescue Board will practice using warning sirens in the city of Pärnu tomorrow. The sirens will sound at 11 AM on May 16 at three locations in Pärnu: near the Tammiste Levira’s mast, the Tele2 mast area on Ehitajate …
65 members of the Riigikogu voted in favour of passing the Act and 3 were against it.
Chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the Riigikogu Hendrik Johannes Terras said that the creation of a legal regulation for using the frozen assets was a complicated challenge that several allied countries and international organisations were working on, and Estonia had a pioneering role to here. “Russia is an aggressor state, and the burden of compensating the war damage caused by it cannot be left to Ukraine and its allies. Russia is responsible for causing the damages and must bear that responsibility,” he pointed out.
According to Terras, the assets that have already been frozen under international sanctions and which in any case cannot be used or disposed of by their owners can be used to compensate for the damage caused by the war of aggression in Ukraine. “With the Act that was passed today, Estonia is proposing a mechanism that provides for the liability of the people and companies directly involved in or contributing to the aggression,” he said, adding that the Constitutional Committee had been discussing the creation of such a regulation in great detail with various parties, including foreign experts, for more than six months.
The Act on Amendments to the International Sanctions Act and Amendments to Other Associated Acts (332 SE), initiated by the Government, will create a national mechanism to ensure the financial liability of an aggressor state for the damage caused by the most serious violations of international law. The amendment will enable the use of assets of individuals and companies that have contributed to Russia’s wrongful acts, which have been frozen under sanctions, as an advance payment for damages owed by Russia to Ukraine.
Before the second reading, the Constitutional Committee had incorporated into the Act an amendment according to which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will decide on the use of the assets as an advance payment for compensation for damage in the course of administrative procedure. According to the initial wording, it would have been necessary to apply for authorisation from administrative court to use the assets.
According to the Act, a decision on the use of assets as an advance payment for compensation for damage can be made where damage has been caused by a wrongful act and the damage has been proved and must be compensated for under international law, and the foreign state that has sustained damage has submitted a relevant claim to the foreign state that has caused the damage, and the state that has caused the damage has not met the claim within a reasonable period of time. In order to launch proceedings on the use of assets in Estonia, a relevant request will have to be submitted to Estonia and the conditions for the use of the assets as an advance payment for compensation for damage and for assigning the right of claim to the owner of the assets will have to be agreed upon with the state that has submitted the request. In addition, the link between the owner of the assets and the wrongful act must be sufficiently proven.
The amendment provides that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will have to determine all the facts and ownership relations relating to the assets and make sure that there are no exceptional circumstances that would make the individual’s interests outweigh the need to apply the measure. According to the Act, the owner of the assets will have the right to contest the decision on the use of the assets in administrative court.
The amendment to the Act also clarifies the competences of state agencies in the implementation of international sanctions and gives them clearer legal bases for the implementation of sanctions and for supervision.
On Thursday, Adamová will meet with President of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) Lauri Hussar. Chairman of the Estonia-Czech Republic Parliamentary Friendship Group Aivar Sõerd and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu Marko Mihkelson will also participate in the meeting. Before the meeting, Adamová will sign the Riigikogu guest book and pose for an official photo with the President of the Riigikogu.
Within the framework of the Lennart Meri Conference on Thursday, the President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic will have a meeting with President of Estonia Alar Karis. On Friday, she will meet with Prime Minister Kaja Kallas at Stenbock House. She will also speak at the Lennart Meri Conference on Friday.
Adamová will be accompanied on the visit by Chairperson of the Committee on European Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies Ondřej Benešík.
On Thursday at 12.30, Markéta Pekarová Adamová will have a meeting with President of the Riigikogu Lauri Hussar at the Riigikogu. Journalists can record the arrival in the White Hall of the Riigikogu, the official photo and the signing of the guest book. We kindly ask the members of the press to be at the entrance hall of the Riigikogu (Lossi plats 1a) at 12.10. Contact: Merilin Kruuse, +372 510 6179, merilin.kruuse@riigikogu.ee
On Friday at 10.45 a.m. Markéta Pekarová Adamová will have a meeting with Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas. The media will have the possibility to record the arrival in the courtyard of Stenbock House, introducing of the delegations, official photo, signing the guest book and the first moments of the meeting. Journalists are asked to be at the entrance hall of Stenbock House (Rahukohtu 3) at 10.25 a.m. at the latest. Contact: Jevgenia Värä, Media Adviser to the Government, phone +372 525 4377, press@riik.ee
NordenBladet —On May 13, General Martin Herem, Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, welcomed Estonia’s President Alar Karis to the Spring Storm exercise today to introduce the head of state to the course and activities of the exercise. Together, they visited various participating units, gaining an overview of their training and …
NordenBladet —From May 10th to 11th, a training session was held at the Tapa military base for Artillery Battalion reservists who arrived for the Spring Storm exercise, preparing them for the deployment of HIMARS rocket launchers. “The current HIMARS unit from the USA stationed in Estonia supports the training with their …
Member of the Riigikogu Varro Vooglaid stated in his presentation that unfortunately the trust in the elections system in Estonia was very low, and tried to find an answer to the question why this was so. “First, it is to be expected that there will be mistrust when the difference between the results of paper voting and online voting is as large as we saw in last year’s elections. We all remember the situation, I will not go into the details, where first the results of the paper ballots showed one picture, and then came the results of the online voting, which completely changed the picture. If they changed the picture a little bit, if they were to re-play the distribution of parliamentary seats to some extent, that would be expected, they do not have to coincide exactly. But if there is a glaring difference between the results obtained by one electoral method and another, it is perfectly reasonable to ask what is going on here,” he said, and added that due to the extremely complicated regulation, it was also virtually impossible to contest the election results.
Vooglaid pointed out that the process and the results of voting were not verifiable and transparent. According to him, secrecy of voting is also not ensured in reality. “It is not possible to check in reality whether the program running in the server during the elections also corresponds to the source code published earlier. It is not an empty accusation, this is reality.”
Among other things, Vooglaid outlined the reasons why Finland did not adopt online voting in 2017. The first of them was technical. “There is no way to make elections secure if you have to establish connection with every voter’s computer because it would not be completely closed. The system simply works like that.” The second point was related to trust. “If you have a ballot paper and a pencil, it is always possible to go back to the ballot papers. If there should be any doubt about the election results, it is always possible to point to the actual ballot papers in the actual box. They can always be counted again, and sometimes have been counted again. In the case of a computer system, the votes go into a big melting pot. Also, the connection between the voter and the big melting pot has to be cut. So there is really no way of ensuring, in a way that the general public can understand, that no fraud has taken place.”
Freedom of information and digital rights activist Märt Põder said that as he had lost trust in online voting, he did not consider it possible to participate in voting with paper ballots either, and gave an overview of his election observer report of 2023. “The computer system where the private key of the elections was generated and where the votes were later counted originated from so to speak nowhere. Proceeding from the online voting manual, I as an observer asked for the opportunity to check that the system in which this key was generated and in which the votes were then counted was free of malware. I was not ensured this possibility, and I filed an election complaint. And that was the only one of my complaints that was partially satisfied. They said that yes, I should have an opportunity to observe something,” Põder said, and pointed out that he had got that possibility only in November 2023.
“It turned out that in the computer system where this key was generated, the elections manager themselves also did not know what they had installed there. The most important system, the system for the generation of the key and counting of votes, had to be an authentic Windows computer, downloaded from an official MSDN Windows repository, Microsoft repository, and following all good practices. And when we put that disk on the computer and started it, then it turned out that it also had ID card software installed, as well as a Notepad++ text editor, and a disk creation software, none of which is a Microsoft product and part of Windows, which means in regard to this computer and this disk that they had assembled it in the course of their day-to-day operations without logging the activity and without having any evidence of what was on the computer, and they also did not remember what they had installed on that disk. This disk was then used to generate the most important keys of the elections, which can be used to decrypt votes. And the person who prepared that computer had every opportunity to get that key from there, or to manipulate the vote counting, because they could install anything they wanted on that computer, on that disk,” Põder said, and described another four episodes that had aroused suspicions in him.
The next speech was by Member of the Riigikogu Martin Helme, who pointed out that the legitimacy of the government was no longer self-evident or credible for a large part of society. “After all, it would be possible to solve that problem quite easily if the issue was only, as we usually say, in communication. The sceptics, the non-believers should be demonstrated how real observability is ensured in the system, how the identified risks have been grounded, how verifiability has been guaranteed both during the elections and after the elections. An absolute majority of reasonable people would be able to admit with peace of mind that questions have been answered, criticisms have been overturned, they have been able to see with their own eyes that all is actually well.”
Helme noted that this had not been done, and a question arose: why. “Is it because it is not considered necessary? All normal people already believe that everything is well, and only the squinty-eyed fools wearing tin foil caps blabber about something, and there is no need to explain them anything anyway. Or could it be that it is not possible to prove that our online voting system works fairly and correctly, because it does not actually work fairly and correctly? I am afraid it is the latter case. The explanation that nearly 40 percent of the population consists of fools and conspiracy theorists cannot be taken very seriously,” he stated, and said that continuing on that path would lead the state and the people of Estonia to destruction. “It is time to take our hands off our ears and eyes and just give up on online elections before it’s too late,” he concluded.
Attorney-at-law Paul Keres underlined in his report that unlike in the case of paper ballot voting, it was extremely complicated for everyone to verify online voting, therefore the court had special importance, meaning and role. “And therefore, I am of the opinion that, in principle, elections can be considered legitimate when they have been conducted in a lawful and credible manner, and either there are no doubts about they way they were conducted or, if there are doubts, these doubts have been discussed and the court has decided that these doubts are not justified.”
Keres said that he had studied the case law with his colleagues from his law firm, and had found 68 judgments and rulings of the Supreme Court that had been made in cases relating to online voting in different years. “Of these 68 cases, 18 appeals were not reviewed. Nine were not reviewed because the complainant failed to file their appeal to the court on time or the court found that the complainant could not justify how the violation the complaint was about specifically infringed their rights. 49 appeals were denied. 12 were denied because there was no right to file complaint, 10 because the term to file a complaint had expired, and further seven were denied because the court considered the appeal to be too general. One appeal was granted, and the reason for this was that the Supreme Court agreed with the complainant that the National Electoral Committee itself had miscalculated the term for filing an appeal and therefore refused to review the complainant’s appeal. But I can say that it did not reach a substantive favourable solution for the complainant either.” Keres thinks that this statistics means that nearly half of the complaints or appeals have not received substantial attention. “In my opinion, this can be regarded as a serious problem, because actually rather serious doubts that deserve to be considered have been brought to the Supreme Court,” he said, and gave several examples.
Keres found that the procedure for elections should be reformed. Firstly, in his opinion, complaints and appeals that are filed not only to defend a person’s own subjective rights but also in defence of public interests should be allowed. Secondly, calculating the terms for filing complaints should be made simpler and the terms should be extended. Thirdly, Keres thinks that the procedure whereby election appeals are settled by the Supreme Court should be replaced by two-stage judicial proceedings: an administrative court with a direct appeal to the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court actually does not have the competence to ascertain facts and to assess facts, it is a court that gives legal assessments and final interpretations,” he stated.
During the debate, Aleksander Tšaplõgin (Centre Party), Andre Hanimägi (Social Democratic Party), Hendrik Johannes Terras (Estonia 200), Andres Sutt (Reform Party), Mario Kadastik (Reform Party), Kalle Grünthal and Ants Froch (Estonian Conservative People’s Party) took the floor.
The leaders of the national defence committees of nine countries will discuss the priorities in current defence and security policy, implementation of NATO regional defence plans and the possibilities for future support to Ukraine in Palanga, Lithuania. Member of the European Parliament and former Prime Minister of Lithuania Andrius Kubilius will speak about the price of insufficient support to Ukraine.
From Palanga, the delegation of national defence committees will travel to Klaipėda, where they will discuss the protection of critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea with the leaders of Lithuanian Navy. Ensuring energy independence, and the role of the state border guard service in the protection of critical infrastructure will be spoken about at the meeting with the representatives of KN Energies, the operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in Lithuania.
Leaders of the national defence committees of the parliaments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Poland participate in the forum.
The National Defence Committee of the Riigikogu has held annual working meetings with the National Defence Committees of the Baltic States since 1998. From 2011, the representatives of the National Defence Committees of the of the Nordic Countries as well as Germany and Poland have also been taking part in these meetings.