Between the beginning of January and the end of June, Climate Ministry representatives have participated in 149 lobby meetings. Tied for second and third are the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (MKM) and Ministry of Social Affairs with 94 meetings each, according to figures published by the Ministry of Justice.

The highest number of registered lobby meetings, 64, were attended by Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications Tiit Riisalo (Eesti 200), followed by Climate Ministry deputy secretaries general Ivo Jaanisoo (46 meetings) and Jaanus Uiga (37 meetings).

Of lobbyists and interest group representatives, the most active was the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications (ITL), with whom state authorities registered a total of 15 meetings. The University of Tartu (TÜ) together with its various entities likewise stood out in terms of number of lobby meetings.

Topping the list of lobbyists with the highest number of meetings were OÜ Energiasalv CEO Peep Siitam with eight meetings, Estonian Infra Construction Association (ESTEL) CEO Tarmo Trei with seven meetings and Meelis Münt, head of regulatory relations for industrial projects at shale oil producer Viru Keemia Grupp (VKG), likewise with seven meetings.

In all, 616 lobby meetings with state authorities were registered with the Ministry of Justice in the first half of this year.

Field regulated by best practice, not law

"All in all, authorities are now doing well with fulfilling their disclosure obligations, although the field is governed by best practice, not law," said NGO Transparency International Estonia member Carina Paju, commenting on the data recently published by the Justice Ministry.

"The Ministry of Justice has done a good job coordinating here to ensure that the data is published each quarter as well as collected from these authorities' websites," she acknowledged. "This shows that compliance with ethical standards is important to Estonia's civil service."

The NGO member stressed that lobbying should be considered more broadly as part of the participatory culture of a democratic society.

"The lobby database shows precisely those meetings with interest groups in which the leadership of ministries and other state authorities have participated," she explained. "Best practice governing lobbyists' meetings stipulates that meetings to be disclosed to the public are those with anyone seeking to influence policy, i.e. the third sector, trade unions, representative organizations, private companies and others. The circle of officials, on the other hand, is narrower and is limited only to members of the management of state authorities, such as ministers, secretaries general, deputy secretaries general, institutions directors, etc."

Paju pointed out that lobbying is not limited to only the aforementioned individuals. "Policies are also influenced at significantly lower levels, but also in local governments and the Riigikogu," she said. "They currently fall outside the framework of best practice, which is why we don't see these meetings."

She also drew attention to the fact that to date, efforts to start publicly disclosing lobbying meetings in the Riigikogu have proven fruitless.

Paju: Meetings related to bill should be available in one place

The Transparency International Estonia member likewise said that in an ideal world, all meetings, communications and opinions related to a single bill would be available in one place.

"This means that we wouldn't have to wade through letters of explanation in the bill information system [EIS], the government and Riigikogu's websites and lobby meeting datasets," she explained. "Rather, all activities related to a single initiative would be comprehensibly and easily accessible on one platform."

Hopefully, Paju added, the co-creation environment still under development will manage to do that in the future.

"Based on the current dataset, we can only draw limited conclusions about how how equal access to policymakers is or how much effort is made to ensure the representation of public and private interest organizations in policymaking," she concluded.

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