The Civil Crisis and National Defense Act covers preparations for and the coordinated management and resolution of crisis situations, states of emergency, states of war, and other minor but still significant events.

The act is designed to establish comprehensive legislation for the resolution of both national defense and civil crises and to set clearer expectations of the government, authorities, local governments and providers of vitals services.

It will also tie together several existing pieces of legislation. State Secretary Taimar Peterkop, who sent the draft law for approval, said the current laws are not compatible in a crisis.

"The current laws are written in silos. The governance of our country is siloed. These laws are like that too – everyone has written their own and they do not fit together very well. We are living in difficult times, there is talk of multiple crises – we have several crises at the same time. In English they call it a "polycrysis". We are seeing it now in Estonia," Peterkop said.

The bill's purpose is to create a "comprehensive, coherent system" in times of crisis.

Municipalities' obligations remain unclear

The Association of Estonian Cities and Rural Municipalities does not agree with the draft.

"Undoubtedly, this is a necessary draft, but in its proposed form, the bill needs further impact analysis to ensure that the bill as a law in administrative practice works as intended and that all parties are clear about their roles, competencies, rights, and obligations in crisis management – both state and local authorities," said Jan Trei, deputy director of the association.

Trei said local governments will be given additional tasks under the new law, but the draft does not lay out exactly what these obligations will be. The association believes they will be expensive to fulfill in terms of investments in crisis preparedness and hiring qualified personnel.

"In view of the knowledge and time needed to prepare the documents, it is not feasible to entrust this task to existing staff, whose workload is already heavy," said Trei. "Another problem is that institutions provide a range of services that could not be administered and managed by a single staff member. As a general rule, local authorities should find additional staff to centrally coordinate the preparation of plans within the authority, drawing on the expertise of staff."

Trei said the lack of crisis management specialists is also a problem. He said the association is requesting €7 million of state funding to cover the costs in the 2025 state budget.

Peterkop said it is not worth waiting for subsidies. "I can say, politically correctly, that this is a political decision at the end of the day. We can all see the state of the national budget. If there is already such a deficit, then to come up with more subsidies – I think that is unrealistic," he said.

Association: Food security not sole responsibility of private companies

Sirje Potisepp, head of the Estonian Food Industry Association, told ERR the group's questions were not answered during the drafting process.

"All the concerns we had previously highlighted remain unchanged and our feedback has not been taken into account," said Potisepp, adding the biggest concern is the cyber requirement for companies.

Potisepp stressed that food security cannot only be the responsibility of private companies.

"We understand very well and we know that food security must be almost as important to the state as defense and energy security, but it cannot and must not be the concern of a handful of private operators alone," she said. "This must be a matter of common concern and cooperation between the state, businesses and all citizens. Real support and subsidies from the state to listed companies, because investments need to be made and they are in the millions, plus annual administrative costs. Businesses have a moral obligation that they would be more willing to shoulder."

Potisepp added that the situation, where all costs are left to the companies and thereby guarantee food production in a crisis situation, is not sustainable.

Retailers: Concerns not answered

Nele Peil, CEO of the Estonian Retailers' Association, told ERR the union is not satisfied with the decisions made in the draft.

"The draft does not reflect the discussions and decisions taken with the Ministry of Regions Affairs and other market players and sectors, and this cannot be welcomed. The draft has been made from the perspective of trade, based on last year's situation. A lot of the information is out of date, but the key issues for 2023 remain unresolved," she said.

Peil said that there will be problems meeting some of the requirements, which, she said, does not take into account modern technologies or the structure and operating logic of multinational companies.

"We will try to explain to the Government Office again and further in the coming months how trading groups and their IT are structured and how business continuity is ensured in a way that takes into account the existing IT structure," said Peil. "A design such as the draft envisages is not feasible, but there are alternatives, and companies are exploring and partly implementing them."

Crisis law and human rights

Critics of the bill say that managing crises, preparing for them and restricting the basic rights of residents should be discussed more thoroughly before the law is adopted.

Lavly Perling, Parempoolsed chairman, stated in an article published in ERR that the crisis law would violate people's basic rights.

She said the bill needs political accountability and social debate because it is about restricting people's basic rights and shifting the balance of power.

Peterkop, however, said people's rights will not change.

"They need to be discussed calmly, this is a very complex area. At the moment, all these different crisis situations, how to react – in a state of war, state of emergency, state of emergency – are in different laws. If you read them now, I think most people do not know what rights the state actually has, how to act effectively in crisis situations," he said.

Peterkopi said that in the new law, various existing laws are simply consolidated.

"At first glance, this may give the impression that – oh, now we are going to restrict fundamental rights. In fact, in principle, nothing changes here. It's just that three different laws are being brought together into one law and we're harmonizing them to be as similar as possible in similar situations to what is already in place, to eliminate such inconsistencies."

Who will solve the crisis?

Peterkop said the new law does not mean that power will be concentrated in the hands of the prime minister in a crisis.

"The authority closest to the crisis will still be the crisis authority. If there are minor crises, they will continue to be dealt with in the same way as they are now – whether it's the PPA, the Rescue Board, the cyber-crisis dealt with by the State Information System Authority (RIA) and so on," said Peterkop.

He said Estonia currently has a prime minister-centred approach to security crises in the current National Defence Act, and new bill will extend that to high-impact civil crises.

Peterkop said crises with a high impact are technically already managed by the prime minister.

"For example, Covid, which was also solved centrally by the prime minister, but for which a state of emergency had to be declared. Other crises that we have seen, for example the removal of the bronze soldier in 2007 – that was led by the prime minister. The ID card crisis – that was led from the level of the prime minister's government. All the crises we have experienced show that if there is a crisis that has a major impact on society as a whole, it is the prime minister who leads it. Now this approach is simply being legitimised"

The development of the new law began in April 2021 and is expected to enter into force on January 1, 2026.

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