This is the case even though the state budget bill 2025 has already headed to the Riigikogu's main chamber for its first reading.

This constitutes an oversight on the part of some of the government's ministers, she told Wednesday's edition of the "Otse uudistemajast" webcast.

Akkermann also conceded that the lengthy explanatory memorandum for the budget is so generalized that finding all expenditures there is more or less impossible, even though the Riigikogu's debating and voting on the bill is supposed to go into that level of detail.

When asked just how a regular MP might be expected to know, for instance, the sums allocated to one theater if they wanted to propose redistributing funds to another playhouse, Akkermann answered that the Riigikogu deals with a higher level of detail.

The redistribution of funds between theaters is decided by the culture ministry, which is the preferable option given specialists familiar with the field work there, Akkermann said.

MPs themselves can ask the minister whether doing so is reasonable, she added.

"The idea that a member of parliament might suddenly decide, 'I want to take money away from this theater because I don't like this opera, for instance, and give it to [Pärnu's] Endla Theater because I don't like the [Tallinn] Draamateater'," shouldn't be viable, as it is just acting on a personal whim, Akkermann said.

"A member of the Riigikogu should not be able to make decisions arbitrarily like that," she added.

"The minister works out the rules on how state support is to be distributed between performance institutions. A methodology on how the distribution of money takes place is then agreed on," Akkermann added.

Decisions of that nature and scale are beyond the Riigikogy's remit and capabilities, she said.

"The Riigikogu doesn't have that competence. The legislature can certainly review things like what our budget position is, how large social benefits are, how much we spend on defense, and how much on the economy."

Not all ministries have allocated their cuts

All 11 ministries are required to make cuts in the context of the 2025 austerity budget, but not all have announced these yet.

Akkermann said that one awkward aspect to the state budget bill is the fact that not all ministries have allocated their cuts.

These include the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior, among others.

As to whether, despite this, she would still vote inf avor of the state budget bill as is, Akkermann, a former finance minister, said that what ministries plan to do can be anticipated.

This is partly because ministers have had to make their presentations before the committee.

For example, Regional and Agricultural Minister Piret Hartman (SDE) told the committee that she would be holding over this year's unused payroll costs into next year.

This is not written into the bill, however. "In its explanatory memorandum, for example, it is stated that the Ministry of the Interior's task of making cuts has not been allocated. That is stated there. But that's not right," Akkermann said.

"I have sent it to the chamber for its first reading. We asked for the unused balances from all ministries from last year, and I also saw it in the explanatory memorandum, right there in the section on cuts, where the Ministry of the Interior says that the cuts are unallocated and that this will be clarified by year-end. These need to be allocated before the second and third readings. Amendments to the budget can be submitted for the second and third readings," the MP went on.

According to Akkermann, 98 percent of the state budget document as is will remain intact, while between readings, the remaining work needed will be done to allocate the cuts.

She added that the failure to allocate them is without doubt an oversight, and that her criticism is directed at the ministers specifically.

The 2025 state budget bill has been criticized over a lack of transparency.

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