Postimees Digest, Monday, April 1
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Parties do not plan to skimp on campaigning.
While major parties say they will be paying more attention to direct contacts with voters this fall, campaign budgets are not set to fall to any notable degree. Secretary generals of both the ruling Reform Party and the oppositional Center Party said the organizations will be prioritizing direct communication with voters and that their media campaigns will be that much more modest this autumn.
Secretary general of the Social Democrat Party (SDE) Indrek Saar said that the party is planning to spend more money on the campaign than it did in 2009 and that he believes major forces will be spending upwards of a million euros. The reformists' minority coalition partner Pro Patria Res Publica Union (IRL) said that while election budgets have not rivalled boom time levels for some time now, the volume of the party's campaign expenses will be comparable to 2009 this year. The four parliament parties spent a total of 2.3 million euros on the local elections campaign of 2009. Local elections are scheduled for October 20.
Free trade agreement with USA would have considerable effect.
Director of the DG for Trade of the European Commission Signe Ratso says in an interview that while preparations for free trade agreements tend to take a long time, a corresponding agreement with USA would hold considerable bonuses for the union even if the two economic areas cannot see eye to eye in all matters. Abolishing the 3 percent customs duty alone would yield notable results, Ratso says.
She goes on to say that Member States should also give the commission a mandate to launch free trade talks with Japan. As concerns Russia, Ratso says that the country has not complied with all the obligations of a WTO member. "There are several obstacles to trade in Russia; while Estonia is most affected by a livestock import ban, there are also problems in the car and timber industries that still have customs and a discriminative utilization tax," the EU official says.