ESTONIA

Mihkelson visits Ukraine with parliamentarians from 14 countries

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
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NordenBladet —

According to Mihkelson, the aim of the visit of the international delegation, which takes place on the eve of and on the Independence Day of Ukraine, is to express firm support to Ukraine. The discussions at the meetings with the members of the Parliament and Government of Ukraine will focus on the security situation and the provision of the necessary aid to Ukraine that would help Ukraine achieve a strategic victory in the war of aggression waged by Russia. Holding Russia to account and compensation for the damages caused by the aggression will also be spoken about.

In Kyiv, the 25-member delegation of parliamentarians will meet with Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk and Chairs of the Committees of the Verkhovna Rada. They will also visit the solemn plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada. They have also planned to have meetings with Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yevhen Perebyinis, Deputy Minister of Defence Andriy Shevchenko and Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Oleksiy Sergeev.

During the visit, the delegation will also attend the Third Summit of the Crimea Platform, which is held in Kyiv. Tomorrow, when Ukraine celebrates its Independence Day, the parliamentarians will visit Hostomel International Airport and the city of Irpin near Kyiv.

Representatives of the parliaments of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden as well as the European Parliament, who belong to the international parliamentary network United4Ukraine, which was formed to support Ukraine, participate in the visit.

Riigikogu Press Service
Karin Kangro
+372 631 6356, +372 520 0323
karin.kangro@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: Mihkelson visits Ukraine with parliamentarians from 14 countries

Source: Parliament of Estonia

Hussar: Finland’s accession to NATO will provide new opportunities for defence cooperation

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
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NordenBladet —

“The defence cooperation between Estonia and Finland has been going on for decades. Now that Finland is a member of NATO, we will have even more opportunities to further cooperation. In these complicated times, we should take full advantage of these opportunities,” Hussar emphasised. The Speakers expressed their delight that Esonia and Finland were important partners to each other which was also manifested in the close cooperation between the parliaments of the two countries.

Besides Finland’s NATO membership and the cooperation between the Estonian and Finnish parliaments, the support to Ukraine, including in its accession to the European Union and NATO, was also discussed at the meeting. Energy security was in focus, too. The President of the Riigikogu pointed out that Estonia wished to decouple itself from Russian power grid and to synchronise itself with the continental European grid. He noted that it was Estonia’s goal to establish offshore wind farms as well as to develop the use of solar energy.

Chairman of the National Defence Committee Kalev Stoicescu also participated in the meeting.

Today, Speaker Halla-aho also met President Alar Karis and Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and visited the Memorial to the Victims of Communism at Maarjamäe in Tallinn.

Photos of the meetings will be uploaded with a delay (Author: Erik Peinar, Chancellery of the Riigikogu)

Riigikogu Press Service
Merilin Kruuse
Phone: +372 631 6592, +372 510 6179
E-mail: merilin.kruuse@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: Hussar: Finland’s accession to NATO will provide new opportunities for defence cooperation

Source: Parliament of Estonia

Marko Mihkelson: democracies need to cooperate

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

“The meetings with Taiwanese leaders mainly focused on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its global impacts, including geopolitical stability in the Taiwan Strait. We unanimously found that democracies needed to cooperate to protect the rules-based world order,” Mihkelson said. “It is in the interests of the Baltic countries to prevent further deterioration of the global security situation. A change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by using military force would be unacceptable and would have a global negative impact,” he emphasised.

According to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it will be necessary to strengthen commercial and economic links with Taiwan, which has a strong democracy and a technologically advanced economy. It is also necessary to seek ways to expand cooperation in areas such as culture, education, research, and tourism. “We need to consider the opening of a Taipei Mission in Estonia to tighten economic and culture contacts. Estonia is the only Baltic state that does not have a non-diplomatic mission of Taiwan at the moment,” Mihkelson noted. “Estonia could seriously consider sending its trade representative to Taipei where representatives of 16 EU countries and the representation of the Commission are present,” he added.

Mihkelson was on a visit to Taiwan with the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Latvian parliament Rihards Kols and the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Lithuanian parliament Žygimantas Pavilionis.

On the joint visit of the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Baltic parliaments that lasted from 6 to 11 August, they met the President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen, the President of the Legislative Yuan Si-Kun You, the Premier of the Executive Yuan Chien-Jen Chen, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, Digital Affairs Minister Audrey Tang, and minister of the Mainland Affairs Council Chiu Tai-san. They also met representatives of the Foreign and National Defense Committee, and the parliamentary friendship group, as well as the main opposition parties the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They also held discussions with representatives of the Center for China Studies of the National Taiwan University, think tanks, and non-governmental organisations.

Photos of the visit

Riigikogu Press Service
Merilin Kruuse
Phone: +372 631 6592, +372 510 6179
E-mail: merilin.kruuse@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

 

 

Link uudisele: Marko Mihkelson: democracies need to cooperate

Source: Parliament of Estonia

Heads of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Baltic States will go on a joint visit to Taiwan

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

During their joint visit, the heads of the committees intend to discuss the implications and changes to the security situation in the region, particularly in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as to identify areas of risk, and avenues for future cooperation with Taiwan, a world leader in advanced microchips, and for building more secure and resilient supply chains. The planned sessions will also focus on ways to keep the region’s peace and stability. The lawmakers underline that the status quo in the Taiwan Strait cannot be changed unilaterally, and they oppose the use or threat of force. Any eventual resolution must be found via diplomacy and dialogue.

According to the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairs, it will be necessary to strengthen commercial and economic links with Taiwan, which has a strong democracy and a technologically advanced economy. They also wish to seek ways to expand cooperation in areas such as culture, education, research, and tourism.

The Chairs of the Baltic States’ Foreign Affairs Committees have scheduled meetings with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Legislative Yuan You Si-kun, Premier of the Executive Yuan Chen Chien-jen, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, and Digital Affairs Minister Audrey Tang, as well as representatives from academia, think tanks, and non-governmental organisations.

Riigikogu Press Service
Karin Kangro
+372 631 6356, +372 520 0323
karin.kangro@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: Heads of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Baltic States will go on a joint visit to Taiwan

Source: Parliament of Estonia

The Baltic States will join the continental European electricity grid at the beginning of 2025

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet – The climate and energy ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania discussed in Riga on Tuesday the details of the political agreement on the earlier synchronization of the Baltic states and that the synchronization with the continental European electricity system will take place in February 2025. According to the plan, the Baltic countries would officially notify the parties of Russia and Belarus’ withdrawal from the electricity system in August 2024, the climate ministry announced.

Next, the system managers of the three countries agree on the technical details, after which the prime ministers of the countries make the final political decision.

Estonian climate minister Kristen Michal said after the meeting that since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, risks have also increased in ensuring the energy security of the Baltic states. “Today’s meeting of the ministers is a sign of the strong unified energy security policy of the Baltic states,” he emphasized.

“Although the Baltic States do not buy or sell electricity to Russia and do not pay Russia for being in the common frequency band, historically we are still physically connected to the electricity system of the aggressor country, and according to the current geopolitical situation, the Baltic States are ready to make joint efforts to move away from the Russian electricity system and move to the Continent – Joining the European system will proceed faster than originally planned,” added Climate Minister Michal.

Featured image: Unsplash
Source: NordenBladet.ee

The European Union Affairs Committee decided it was necessary to amend the initiative on repair of goods

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

At its today’s sitting, the European Union Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) discussed the European Union initiative for common rules promoting the repair of goods. The aim of the initiative is to reduce the quantity of waste generated and to support environmental protection and the green transition. As a result of the changes, the production of goods and the need for valuable resources to make new products should decrease.

The obligatory activities to facilitate the repair of goods that were set out on the proposal were not supported by the European Union Affairs Committee on the 7 July sitting of the Committee. In the meantime, the Committee together with the Ministry of Justice had been working on new proposals regarding the initiative, that were in line with the views of the members of the Riigikogu on promoting the repair of goods.

Chair of the Committee Liisa Pakosta, several other countries also were critical of the obligations proposed by the European Union for the same reasons as Estonia. “We really want that things were repaired more, but to achieve this, the obligations imposed must be appropriate and, secondly, they must be reasonably enforceable,” Pakosta underlined. She said that the European Union Affairs Committee had decided that it would not be right to adopt the Directive in the proposed form because obliging the producer to repair goods would not help an owner of a broken washing machine in Kõpu, who would have to send it, for example, to France for repairs. It would be of much more use if a clear obligation was imposed for producers to improve the access to all spare parts and repair instructions to repairers and end-users of the products. “A much greater reduction in the transport footprint would be achieved if all spare parts could be ordered online and the information on all the drawings needed for repairs was available,” Pakosta noted.

The Chair of the Committee added that if the EU wanted to create a webpage to help find repair services, it should be central and multilingual. “In Estonia, people can find this information using existing search engines, but maybe when you are in another country for work, it really helps if you can quickly find a repair shop there, using central information,” she said, and emphasised that repairing products is a very important environmental goal, but the repair itself must also be organised in an environmentally friendly way, and the most environmentally friendly way was to repair things without transporting them too far.

“We also consider it important that the consumer should be given information on repair services before concluding the contract according to the legislation already in force, but do not support establishing the repair information form set out in the directive. Preparing a page-sized table as a price offer would increase the administrative burden of businesses while we would have no guarantee that it will be of any use to the consumer, especially in a situation where the consumer would have to pay for the price offer,” Pakosta found. “Actually, in another item on the agenda, we also decided to support more broadly the reduction of reporting by 25%, and we thought it important to add that the reduction in reporting should be kept in mind already in a proactive way, when creating new legal provisions,” she added.

For more information, please contact: Liisa Pakosta, phone +372 502 6191

Riigikogu Press Service
Maris Meiessaar
Phone: +372 631 6353, +372 5558 3993
E-mail: maris.meiessaar@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: The European Union Affairs Committee decided it was necessary to amend the initiative on repair of goods

Source: Parliament of Estonia

The United States strategic bombers conducted training in Estonian airspace

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —On Wednesday, a United States Air Force B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers made an overflight of Estonia as a part of exercise. The aircraft were accompanied by several British, French and Romanian jets. The United States conducts similar exercises regularly to assess its readiness and, if necessary, to fulfill its security …

Source: Estonian Defence Forces

The European Union Affairs Committee amended Government’s positions for debate on energy transition in fisheries and aquaculture sector

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

The European Union Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) gave its support to Minister of Regional Affairs Madis Kallas for the upcoming meeting of the ministers of agriculture and fisheries of the European Union, saying that fishing fleets in general need to be renewed in order to meet climate targets, and that the current order of financing the Fisheries Fund needs to be changed for this, and Estonia believes additional money from the EU is needed.

For energy transition, it is necessary to amend the fishing fleet capacity ceilings because new alternative fuels and solutions do not fit in the current ceilings. In practice, this means that ships with lower CO2 emissions have to be built larger and more powerful due to new energy solutions, just as electric cars are heavier due to batteries and therefore need a larger engine.  

The European Union Affairs Committee amended the positions of the Government in two aspects. Chair of the European Union Affairs Committee Liisa-Ly Pakosta said that besides protecting fish stocks, restriction of fishing with quotas also served the targets of achieving more modest emissions of fishing fleets, and therefore the issue should be solved more reasonably.

“The countries that already have fishing quotas should not be forced to deal with replacing engines and thus also vessels,” Pakosta added, and explained that when the volume of fishing is restricted, the engine would not give an advantage – for example, if it was allowed to fish 1000 tons, the capacity of engine would not be decisive for achieving the environment targets.

Therefore, the European Union Affairs Committee amended the positions by adding that Estonia encouraged other countries where this was possible to transfer to fishing quotas because that would make it possible to remove dealing with the engine capacity ceiling from the agenda in the EU.

As another issue, the European Union Affairs Committee discussed the issue of greater participation of women in the fisheries sector. Deputy Chair of the Committee Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski said that the percentage of women involved in the fishing sector is low and there is a wish to increase it. However, the idea of building new cabins for women is not necessary, but rather an example could be taken from the Estonian conscript service, where women and men participate equally and living arrangements are organised sensibly and efficiently.

The position of Estonia is that the technical limitations of fishing vessels do not prevent the participation of women, and vessels do not have to be built larger to accommodate women.

For more information, please contact: Liisa Pakosta +372 502 6191

Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski +372 5332 5999

Riigikogu Press Service
Gunnar Paal, +372 631 6351, +372 5190 2837
gunnar.paal@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

 

Link uudisele: The European Union Affairs Committee amended Government’s positions for debate on energy transition in fisheries and aquaculture sector

Source: Parliament of Estonia

European Union Affairs Committee in Ukraine: Onset of war fatigue is unacceptable

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

“All meetings were very emotional and moving. Our Committee’s first visit in Europe was to Ukraine, and it was highly appreciated there. In spite of the war, the Ukrainian officials and members of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) have been meeting the recommendations of the European Commission with unprecedented speed and enthusiasm. We also discussed the issues where Ukraine still has to do homework in order to start the EU accession negotiations,” Chair of the European Union Affairs Committee Liisa Pakosta said.

In her opinion, the plan for reconstruction of Ukraine and the possibility to do this, among other things, with Russia’s frozen assets are very important. “We shared, and we will continue to share our experience and solutions both in the accession process with the European Union and in our current activities. It is also very important that Estonia’s representatives persistently convince other countries of the need to understand the importance of a fair and swift trial of Russia’s war criminals. Estonia can also convince others of how the onset of war fatigue would be wrong from the moral aspect and for our European values,” she added.

Member of the European Union Affairs Committee Tanel Kiik noted that the bravery and determination of the Ukrainian people in defending their country and their nation were amazing. “We saw it at the meetings with civil servants, voluntary associations and leaders of local governments who are real patriots of their home region. It is the duty of Estonia and the free world to unwaveringly support Ukraine in winning the war, restoring its territorial integrity and rebuilding the country,” he said,

The Estonian delegation was in Ukraine from Monday to Wednesday. In Kyiv, they had meetings with Chair Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze and Deputy Chair Vadym Halaichuk of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Integration of Ukraine to the EU, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yevhen Perebyinis, Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets, Counsellor of the Deputy Prime-Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic integration Ivan Nagornyak, representatives of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Chairman of the Ukraine-Estonia Parliamentary Friendship Group Arsenii Pushkarenko. The members of the European Union Affairs Committee also met with the European Union Ambassador to Ukraine Matti Maasikas and Representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Ukraine Jarno Habicht. Human rights situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine as well as further possibilities for Estonia to assist Ukraine in the civil society sphere were discussed with the representatives of the Centre for Civil Liberties, the Crimean Platform and the NGO Truth Hounds.

After meeting with Governor of Zhytomyr Oblast Vitaliy Bunechko and Mayor of Malyn Oleksandr Sytailo, the members of the Riigikogu saw the bridge in the centre of Malyn that was damaged in a bombing. Estonia is supporting the restoration of the bridge. In the city of Ovruch, they visited the kindergarten with a shelter that was built by Estonia and children’s centre for creativity, and met with Mayor of Ovruch Ivan Korud. The delegation of the European Union Affairs Committee also visited the memorial to children killed in war in Kyiv, and met with the Director of the Museum of the Second World War and saw a detailed exhibition on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and removing of red symbols from city space.

Besides Pakosta and Kiik, members of the European Union Affairs Committee Arvo Aller, Maido Ruusmann, Luisa Rõivas and Kristo Enn Vaga participated in the visit.

Riigikogu Press Service
Karin Kangro
+372 631 6356, +372 520 0323
karin.kangro@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: European Union Affairs Committee in Ukraine: Onset of war fatigue is unacceptable

Source: Parliament of Estonia

Riigikogu Rural Affairs Committee supports drought assistance to farmers

By
Helena-Reet Ennet
-

NordenBladet —

Chairman of the Rural Affairs Committee Urmas Kruuse pointed out that the long drought period had caused many problems. In order to implement national assistance measures, it is necessary to assess the extent of damage caused to the farmers and on this basis, make a decision on support measures. “It is important to give the farmers confidence regarding the compensation of damages in their economic activities through the EU support measure and the possible national assistance added to it,” Kruuse said.

Deputy Chairman of the Rural Affairs Committee Rene Kokk considers it necessary that the Government should give clear guidelines to the Tax and Customs Board and negotiate with financial institutions about extending the payment period of taxes, grant interest relief on tax payments for a certain period and facilitate loan terms. “If the Government decides that currently there is a crisis in the sector, and there clearly is in the agriculture sector, then it is a clear guideline for these agencies and a message to the sector that the state has recognised the nature of the problem,” Kokk said.

It was agreed at the Committee sitting that in order to ensure the sustainability of agriculture, it is necessary to add the state assistance to the aid package provided by the European Union.

Minister of Regional Affairs Madis Kallas and representatives of the Estonian Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce and the Estonian Farmers’ Federation participated in the sitting of the Rural Affairs Committee.

Minister of Regional Affairs Madis Kallas agreed that it was necessary to support the sector and he hopes that explanations about potential measures will come in August.

Riigikogu Press Service
Eleen Lindmaa
+372 631 6356, +372 5551 4433
eleen.lindmaa@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: Riigikogu Rural Affairs Committee supports drought assistance to farmers

Source: Parliament of Estonia

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