The party's board member Andrus Kaarelson said that he considers Prime Minister Kristen Michal's (Reform) statement, according to which Estonia would have to borrow to hike defense spending to 5 percent of the gross domestic product, to be "extremely incompetent."

"If the government refrained from wasting the money raised through new taxes on current expenses and directed all of it toward national defense, Estonia's defense budget would be 5.5 percent of GDP already this year," Kaarelson said.

He added that were this the case, Estonia would be spending 6.7 percent of GDP on defense in 2026. "The thing that makes the current government dangerous is that money collected under the aegis of security is not ending up in national defense," he emphasized.

According to Kaarelson, Reform-led governments have explained a series of new taxes and tax hikes through the security prism. He harked back to the words of then-Prime Minister Kaja Kallas from April of 2023, according to which, "income tax and VAT hikes could basically be described as a national defense tax."

A few months later, the government once again justified introducing a vehicle tax through the need to boost security. Late last year, a defense tax in name was also added in the form of additional income tax and VAT hikes plus restoring corporate tax in Estonia, the Parempoolsed board member said.

"But of the funds to be collected with this last package, only 27 percent will end up in national defense, or the Ministry of Defense's budget to be exact."

Kaarelson said that money collected under the security label needs to be directed toward defense post haste, followed by extensive public sector cost-cutting.

"We need to give up nice-to-have things, end universal benefits and stop indexing state budget expenses."

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