Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, should have resigned over a scandal involving her husband’s business ties with Russia, President Alar Karis stated, ERR reports. Speaking after a meeting with the leaders of parliamentary parties, Karis said that he would personally have preferred to see Kallas resign for the sake of the government’s effectiveness and Estonia’s…
Many Estonian companies continue doing business with Russia, ERR reports. Altogether 500-600 Estonian businesses still trade goods with Russia. The total value of goods exported from Estonia to Russia has not changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when it amounted to EUR 50-70mn per month. This is partly due to the rise…
A public petition against the Estonian government’s planned car tax collected 65,565 signatures by its close on 31 August 2023, ERR reports. The Estonian Car Owners Association (EAOL) initiated the petition in the middle of July 2023. The number of signatures is the highest ever for public petitions on the Citizen Initiative Portal (Rahvaalgatus). The…
The municipal government of Estonia’s second-largest city, Tartu, is considering introducing new time restrictions on the sale of alcoholic beverages, ERR reports. The city council will discuss possible restrictions in October 2023. In spring 2023, the municipality agreed with most nightclubs in the city to close their doors half an hour earlier in summer. However,…
The Estonian Reform Party does not want its leader, Kaja Kallas, to resign as prime minister, despite a scandal over the involvement of Kallas’s husband in business with Russia, ERR reports. Kallas has repeatedly insisted that she would not resign, and said that her party was not looking for a new prime minister, either. Following…
Estonia’s Prime Minister, Estonian Reform Party leader Kaja Kallas, remains the most popular candidate for prime minister, according to a Norstat poll for the Institute of Societal Research (YI) in late August 2023, ERR reports. The survey showed that 23.7% of voters would like Kallas to remain as prime minister, while 20.2% prefer Jüri Ratas,…
Estonia’s GDP totalled EUR 9.42bn at current prices in the the second quarter of 2023, which was up 5.1% from the same period of 2022, according to data from Statistics Estonia, ERR reports. Real GDP fell by 2.9% over a year, however. Compared to the first quarter of 2023, seasonally adjusted real GDP decreased by…
Estonia’s average monthly gross salary amounted to EUR 1,873 in the second quarter of 2023, which was up 12.4% from the same period of 2022, according to data from Statistics Estonia, The Baltic Guide reported. The highest average salaries were in information and communication (EUR 3,257), finance and insurance (EUR 2,953), and energy supply (EUR…
Latvia’s national air carrier, airBaltic, will open flights on eleven new routes in May 2024, including seven from Latvia, two from Estonia, and two from Lithuania, BNS reports. The company will open flights from Riga to Alicante, Chisinau, Ljubljana, Pristina, Skopje, Sofia, and Tirana. Also, airBaltic will open flights from Tallinn to Billund in Denmark…