SDE asks foreign trade minster Kert Kingo for account of her work to date
Opposition Social Democratic Party (SDE) has asked Minister for Foreign Trade and IT Kert Kingo (EKRE) to give an account of how she spends her working day, on what, and when she has attended international meetings relevant to her role.
"We are used to ministers' professional activity being public in Estonia," said SDE MP and former party leader Jevgeni Ossinovski, who submitted the official interpellation to the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) on Thursday.
"The media covers the activities of various ministers in relatively specific detail. However, we have very little information on the activities of minister Kingo. We know that she will only travel abroad in extreme cases, but what she does with her working days at home has so remained in the dark," Ossinovski continued.
After being appointed IT and foreign trade minister in May, replacing Marti Kuusik who had to step down after a couple of days following domestic violence allegations which appeared in the media, Kingo said she would only travel in exceptional cases, despite her role involving, as its title suggests, promoting Estonia's business interests abroad. Kingo also said that on foreign trips, as elsewhere, her working language would be Estonian, with the use of an interpreter, and not English.
SDE wants Kert Kingo to outline steps she has taken so far to attract foreign investment into Estonia and support the export of Estonian companies. The party is also enquiring when Kingo has represented Estonia at the European Union's foreign affairs council, as well as the union's competitiveness council and its transport, telecommunications and energy council, all of which the party thinks fall under her purview. The party also wants to know what topics Kingo raised at these councils, if she attended them.
According to Estonian news portal Geenius, as of late August, Kingo had only been on one overseas working trip, and had turned down several, including a major economic forum in Poland, unofficially called the "east Davos" summit, which had previously been attended by former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
Kingo said at the time that the summer break had been a factor, with invitations still open to her to be reviewed in September.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
