The change comes into effect from January 16, and EPL joins Postimees and Õhtuleht in no longer publishing a print edition on Mondays, while the print version of business daily Äripäev stopped appearing at the end of 2022.

In a joint statement issued Wednesday (link in Estonian), EPL editor-in-chief Urmo Soonvald and Argo Virkebau, board chair of Delfi Media, which publishes the daily, said that: "This forced choice was not the result of the free will of the publishers, but of the combination of price increases and official decisions."

These rises in price mostly relate to the cost of delivery of newspapers and periodicals, imposed by state-owned postal service Omniva.

"The state had the time and opportunities to analyze the short-term and long-term effects of price increases, but for some reason, the fact that approximately 65,000 subscribers to Õhtuleht, Postimees and EPL could no longer read the paper on Mondays was of some benefit," the statement added.

The Saturday print edition of EPL stopped appearing several years ago, meaning it will appear four days per week from this month onward.

EPL says the four editions will consequently each contain more content than before.

Omniva announced in early December that newspaper delivery costs would rise by as much as 22 percent, with this falling particularly heavily on delivery to more remote parts of the country.

This prompted the immediate ending of Monday print editions for Postimees and Õhtuleht, while the editors-in-chief of these two papers forecast that EPL would follow suit soon.

All three papers have websites, while Postimees operates several regional dailies. EPL belongs to the same media group which publishes print weeklies Eesti Ekspress and Maaleht

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