According to a new regulation which came into force this week, for every new obligation introduced, at least one existing burden must be pared back or eliminated altogether. The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs says the rationale is a need to cut the administrative burden on businesses.

Mindsets should also change so that when drafting each legislative or regulatory amendment, consideration should be given to how an administrative burden could be at the same time cut back, and at which points. This information must be presented at the beginning of the explanatory memorandum to any bill.

There are currently 1,091 government plus 2,874 ministerial regulations in force in Estonia, making nearly 4,000 in total.

Spokesperson for the justice ministry Ann Mäekivi told ERR that in order to identify options for alleviating burdens, ministries are to conduct a thorough review of all the regulations, since many of them may be outdated, duplicated, or simply no longer needed.

Mäekivi said the new rule applies to both laws and regulations and will also be implemented when transposing EU legislation into domestic law.

"Exceptions are only possible in special cases – for example, in the case of taxes, temporary measures, or security-related rules," Mäekivi added.

Mäekivi said it is up to each ministry to organize the review of regulations within its area of governance, while the need itself to amend ministerial regulations will be decided by the ministry responsible for that area.

The government itself must then decide whether to effect that change.

"A decision on changing government regulations will be made by the Government of the Republic based on a proposal from the minister responsible for the respective area," Mäekivi added.

Compliance with these rules will be monitored by the justice ministry in the case of draft bills, by the Government Office for government regulations, and by each ministry itself for its own ministerial regulations.

The economic growth council has also been meeting since March, forwarding to the government proposals from business in cutting bureaucracy. Information on the various administrative burden reduction initiatives is exchanged continuously among the various parties, ie. the council, the ministries and the government office.

"The proposals received via the business council are assessed and ultimately the necessary legal acts will still be prepared by the ministries, so all the necessary information will be available to the ministry responsible for the area," Mäekivi said.

The promise to cut regulation and to follow the principle of an existing bureaucratic requirement being repealed every time a new administrative burden on businesses is imposed was a part of the coalition agreement signed by Kristen Michal's previous Reform-Eesti 200-SDE administration for the years 2024–2027.

There are 11 ministries in Estonia. Two of them, the Ministry of Climate and the Ministry of Social Affairs, have their work split across the portfolios of two ministers each.

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