ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 18, No. 1 (EE) May 2019 Estonia political briefing: The new Estonian Government has been formed: reflections, prospects, concerns 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 The new Estonian Government has been formed: reflections, prospects, concerns Having been extensively described in a number of our previous briefings, the process of voting for and then forming the newest governmental coalition in Estonia was arguably still within the framework of liberal democracy, but evidently stretching the boundaries of political ethic and generating plenty of justified concerns about the nation’s strategic agenda in years to come. In international media (for example, ‘Hard-Line Nationalists Affirmed as Part of Estonia’s Cabinet’1 in Bloomberg), the stories on Estonia as an e-country, which champions the digital world, started being substituted by a particular narrative that is directly associated with the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) and its activities. On the local ground, the current Prime Minister’s political movement – the Estonian Centre Party (Centre) – has already felt some severe consequences of their decision to form the post-elections governmental coalition with the EKRE. As reported, the ‘centrists’ are currently enjoying (is it a correct word, considering circumstances?) the support of 15.3% of the electorate, keeping in mind that they received 23.1% of the votes during the March 2019 parliamentary elections2. For Jüri Ratas and his party, such a drop in popularity means a significant gain for the competition – the oppositional Estonian Reform Party is the favourite for 34% of the prospective voters, boosting its elections-recorded figures by more than 5%3.