Committee chair Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200) has said that the Riigikogu was however unable to keep the issue a domestic one, as the required documentation reached the legislature too late, with a ministry or other domestic institution likely responsible rather than the EU itself.

Pakosta gave an interview to ERR on the proposal, which would if enacted also check payment speeds.

What is to be done in this situation, where the European Commission brings up a quite clearly ridiculous proposal? How can things like that even transpire?

First off, we need to understand that there are only a few days remain to the end of the European Commission's current composition, while the European Parliament elections are coming soon.

Long-term Riigikogu MPs have noted that right before the Riigikogu elections (almost a year ago to the day – ed.), efforts are made to get the last remaining bills pushed through rapidly. Unfortunately, the same does not happen with the EU.

We are right now dealing with bills which have not previously been approved or have not reached consensus. So now they are still trying to see if this bill will get anywhere, or not. You simply have to consider the timing factor too.

If specifically the idea is that a maximum 30-day payment deadline for all payments should be established across the entire EU, with interest automatic if missing that deadline, then this is clearly over-regulation. There's really no need to do this.

Do you not feel that in reality, discussing things like that would be, in some ways a waste of time? There is no real problem, is there?

We are just as much a part of the EU as Germany and France are.

Second, all Riigikogu committees also talk over various proposals that have come from various places, but not all of these become legal norms. This is the concept of ​​democracy: That people can make different proposals, while these proposals must be discussed.

A normal part of democracy is also that the majority decides. So we therefore cannot completely rule out that the majority of member states agree with this regulation, meaning we really have to include it in our national plans?

Foolish decisions can never be completely ruled out, that much is true. We have to work with the larger states, to ensure that the majority does not in fact decide that way. Such a basic knowledge of arithmetic also has its place in politics, and must be acted on accordingly.

137 affiliated EU organizations gave feedback on the commission's regulation, which is a ridiculously figure small for such an important proposal.

Indeed. In the course of the EU affairs committee's work, we have become more and more open with our discussions, so that the public can follow them. Decisions must not be made withing such a close circle. This specific proposal is not properly reasoned at all. We have a draft regulation on the table, but one which is not well drafted, which is not well-reasoned, so this is certainly one argument in favor of opposing it.

The European Commission oughtn't really to be a body easily influential as a producer of regulations, while clearly argued in-depth papers should still emanate there? But we can see from this example that this has not been the case.

Well, what should be in fact sometimes differs from what is, unfortunately. Even with this example, the documentation actually reached the Riigikogu after the deadline for scrutiny of subsidiarity (an EU term-ed.) had expired. In other words, domestically speaking, we were not able to move as quickly as we really needed to. This is a problem in and of itself.

We commissioned a study at the end of last year, whose result also showed that this is one thing that we need to improve significantly on the domestic front. The Riigikogu cannot currently utilize all its influence effectively and in the best way in terms of the Estonian people's interests. For this, it is really necessary to speed up the process in our country so that things reach us on time.

I suspect that 95 percent of people in Estonia may not know what "scrutiny of subsidiarity" is. Simply put, you should decide in the Riigikogu whether a concern needs to be resolved domestically, and if that fails, we will try to resolve it a pan-European manner. So why didn't the draft, with the documentation, reach you in time?

Legislatures, including the Riigikogu in Estonia, have been granted a tool with which we can say we decide on behalf of our state that this issue must remain a matter for domestic regulation.

This is actually the most important tool of the Riigikogu, in Estonia. A deadline is set for the subsidiarity control, across the entire EU. But if this draft reaches the Riigikogu only after this deadline has passed, then we will not be able to use our most important tool.

Whose failure was it to send this on time?

In order for this to work, either the minister responsible, the ministry or indeed the government office needs to get its head out of the sand more quickly; we are discussing this, in the spirit of good cooperation, with everyone.

But it the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [who were responsible]?

Honestly, I'll leave that unanswered for the time being. We on the EU affairs committee came to realize that, unfortunately, scrutiny of subsidiarity cannot be used here, as the window for that has simply gone. However, we should start looking through the documentation, to establish who exactly failed to do what.

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