ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 27, No. 3 (EE)

March 2020

Estonia social briefing: A society at home E-MAP Foundation MTÜ

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

A society at home

When the whole society is staying at home for a good month (with a provision to continue being not so social for an unknown period), there is plenty of time to reflect on what is going on. A point of departure for such reflections to be later systematised is usually unclear. Initially, a society can express quite a few concerns on the fact of rapid disappearance of democratic freedoms. Even the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Urmas Reinsalu, confirmed that “all restrictions that have been currently imposed in in the interest of public health would be disproportionate under normal circumstances”1. At the same time, as argued by Rein Lang, “[t]he race to obstruct the free movement of people inside the European Union held between politicians is nothing short of impressive”, but “[a]ssurances that it will not affect the movement of goods are empty at best”2.

Then, for those who lose their jobs, a major concern appears to be existing in the fields of political economy and labour law. What are you going to be doing if your employer is kindly asking (forcing?) you to take an unpaid leave due to the state of emergency?3 How quickly can you convert a narrative on different (and undisputed) consequences of economic hardship into something else, which is closely associated with your natural desire to keep living? At the end of the day, as it was noted by Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the country’s former President, “[t]here is little gain in having an economy if you [a]re dead” and that the previous generations “understood perfectly that the main thing during World War II was to survive”4. For the society as a whole, however, it was very encouraging to hear that the current Government, while desperately trying to save more lives, has not given up on economy as well. Aivar Kokk (Pro Patria), the ’s Finance Committee Chairman, confirmed that the governmental coalition remembers “how quickly unemployment went up in the previous economic crisis”, leaving a high number of Estonian families “with the choice of whether to pay for water and

1 Urmas Reinsalu in Toomas Kask, ‘Reinsalu: There will not be an era of silence’, , 31 March 2020. Available from [https://news.postimees.ee/6937860/reinsalu-there-will-not-be-an-era-of-silence]. 2 Rein Lang, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ in ERR, 21 March 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1067078/rein-lang- why-why-why]. 3 ‘Когда могут урезать зарплату? Как мне работать, если дети дома? Бояться ли сокращения? Что надо знать о трудовых отношениях в условиях кризиса’ in rus.Delfi.ee, 12 April 2020. Available from [https://rus.delfi.ee/daily/business/kogda-mogut-urezat-zarplatu-kak-mne-rabotat-esli-deti-doma-boyatsya-li- sokrascheniya-chto-nado-znat-o-trudovyh-otnosheniyah-v-usloviyah-krizisa?id=89460137]. 4 Toomas Hendrik Ilves, ‘Ilves: Ensuring survival of the Estonian people more important than economy’ in ERR, 5 April 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1073192/ilves-ensuring-survival-of-the-estonian-people-more- important-than-economy].

1 heating, make loan payments or buy dinner”5. Therefore, there may be a smart way found to not “sacrifice the Estonian economy on the altar of public health”6, but save both the people and the economy at the same time.

After that, an extreme version of common sense kicks out, questioning an unexpected situation when an EU Member State – a country that belongs to the most prosperous as well as technologically advanced geographic segment of the globe – has to purchase simplistic medical masks from a Chinese manufacturer, instead of organising its production at home, in a couple of days. , a high-profile Estonian Member of the European Parliament, underscored this le secret de Polichinelle, noting that “[t]he current crisis has shown that the European Union must be able to produce enough goods of critical importance on its own”7. For a surprise of many, it was reported that a manufacturer from China “was sought since a supplier could not be found in Europe at present”8. Indeed, it would have been sounding like a dystopian nonsense, if it had not been a pure reflection of reality – the society realised that, according to Jaak Aab (Centre), the country’s Minister of Public Administration, Estonia had to place a USD 11.4 million order to get “masks, gloves, protective suits, goggles and other equipment”9 from China. In addition, the Minister specified that “[t]he entire [Chinese] order is a one-month supply, as the situation progresses”10. However, after the crisis is over, there will be plenty of questions to be addressed by different societies of the EU’s Member States to the European Commission.

Finally, when the chaos comfortably adopts a form of a new normal and your own society’s 1,000 odd COVID-19 infected start representing a drop in the human ocean of those who suffer, a sudden need to hear much more from the Government on what scenarios they consider formulates your reflections. However, what is even more important for a democracy (considering the astonishingly huge funds, which the Government is currently borrowing to be able to tackle the crisis), the public would probably still prefer having some sort of control over

5 Aivar Kokk in ‘Aivar Kokk: The economy cannot be sacrificed on the altar of public health’, ERR, 1 April 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1071414/aivar-kokk-the-economy-cannot-be-sacrificed-on-the-altar-of- public-health]. 6 Kokk. 7 Urmas Paet in ‘MEP: Europe must have readiness to produce goods of critical importance’, ERR, 12 April 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1076411/mep-europe-must-have-readiness-to-produce-goods-of-critical- importance]. 8 ‘Minister: We're ordering Chinese coronavirus equipment, as Europe is closed’ in ERR, 27 March 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1069606/minister-we-re-ordering-chinese-coronavirus-equipment-as-europe- is-closed]. 9 Jaak Aab in ‘Minister: We're ordering Chinese coronavirus equipment, as Europe is closed’. 10 Aab.

2 it11. Evidently, the Estonian society has gone through the above-mentioned four stages of reflective behaviour in a bit less than a calendar month. Too fast? Probably, yes, but it has already made the country’s ‘Why?’ – having been asked for whatever reason and in whichever direction – sounding louder and more experience-driven than ever before the crisis.

For example, serious reporters in Estonia started questioning the role of World Health Organisation (WHO) in monitoring the disastrous situation12. Most definitely, Estonia, as a non- permanent member of the UN Security Council should be (will be?) launching an inquiry on WHO and the organisation’s leadership in the context of how competent they have been in the process of handling the COVID-19 crisis. More specifically, a number of very serious questions are still unanswered on the initial period of the crisis, when the international community had been given totally wrong signals about the nature of the virus. In such a context, some kind of a comprehensive official position of the EU on the issue can be very helpful for different European societies as well, but where is the EU these days?

However, this an outer-aspect, which is not necessarily all the time in the hands of the local society to be fixed. As for the inner-societal concerns, evidently, there is one related to the Estonian liberal democracy and its future. For example, Raimond Kaljulaid (Social Democratic Party), a high-profile oppositional politician, argued that

We agreed to limit our freedoms to save lives. But it is important to remember that all these restrictions and prohibitions must be [treated as] temporary. Our task is to defeat the virus and then restore the freedoms. […] I do not think that today we may find or have already found ourselves in a situation directly threatening parliamentary democracy, but, of course, we are closer to this line than ever [before] in the past thirty years.13

Not exactly following the above-cited line, Rein Lang (Reform Party), the country’s former Minister on three different occasions (of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Culture), wrote extensively on the state-society relationships during the current crisis: Our constitution provides that Estonia is a parliamentary country, also in an emergency situation. Our freely elected parliament is responsible for making sure our assets and our freedoms are safe. More so in an emergency situation that gives the government additional

11 Lang. 12 Lang. 13 Raimon Kaljulaid in ‘Демократии угрожает опасность’, rus.Delfi.ee, 4 April 2020. Available from [https://rus.delfi.ee/projects/opinion/demokratii-ugrozhaet-opasnost?id=89460181]. Non-official translation from by E-MAP Foundation MTÜ.

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powers. Why then is the Riigikogu taking cover from the virus by not working, while medics are expected to work harder? Why are the police closing their service bureaus that were luckily quickly opened again in somewhat dialled back form?14

These inner-concerns are hard to ignore, if anyone would ever want to rebuff such an important issue as democracy in Estonia. In general, the society would prefer thinking that the expressed anxieties are, in fact, ill-grounded, and the country’s democratic political regime will be as strong as ever, having survived a mega-crisis of global significance. If it will be the case, may be the COVID-19 times will be remembered in Estonia only as a disastrous period that, paradoxically, solidified the country’s democratic postulates. For example, a research in the field of e-governance15 hinted that the pandemic can cobble the way for online voting – a routine democratic exercise in Estonia – to be widely accepted around the world. It was argued that “internet voting is the most cost-efficient way of voting in Estonia, more-so than using traditional paper ballots and up to nine times more cost-efficient than other options”16. A truly paradoxical twist in the horrific environment of global societal disarray…

14 Lang. 15 Robert Krimmer, David Duenas-Cid and Iuliia Krivonosova, ‘TalTech researchers: Why the pandemic may pave the way for online voting’ in ERR, 13 April 2020. Available from [https://news.err.ee/1076751/taltech-researchers- why-the-pandemic-may-pave-the-way-for-online-voting]. 16 Krimmer, Duenas-Cid and Krivonosova.

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