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A political agreement in needed in Estonia as to how the country will go on with administrative reform, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said on Tuesday.
Ilves: Administrative reform requires political agreement
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At a meeting of the presidential roundtable on local government and regional development, Minister of Regional Affairs Siim Kiisler presented the administrative reform plan building on the principle of population hubs, spokespeople for the president said.
The president said that moves by several regional affairs ministers of different party backgrounds toward an administrative reform have been seen in Estonia in recent years, none of which has produced a result due to differences within governing coalitions.
«Today we are in a situation where it would be fair vis-a-vis municipalities and citizens alike to arrive at a political agreement – how to move on,» said the head of state. «I am waiting, and all local government leaders are waiting clear messages from the government on how and in what manner one will move on the with the administrative reform.»
According to the president, no duties can be assigned and orders given to municipalities as long as they cannot be sure that the reform will be carried out based on the model of population hubs.
Ilves stressed that administrative reform is not just redrawing the borders of municipalities but includes a review of the financing and the duties of municipalities and imposing of standards if necessary.
The meeting also heard Kalle Kuttis, deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Education, give an overview of rearrangements in the school network in the coming few years and the chairman of the supervisory board of the Volunteer Rescue Association, Rait Killandi, speak about the work of volunteer rescuers and their cooperation with municipalities.
Current plans are to carry out an administrative reform in Estonia based on the principle of population centers where local governments would agree on their region's most popular destinations for commuters and then choose which of them to merge with. As a result, the number of municipalities is expected to be reduced to 30-50 from the current 200-plus by 2017.
As 18 municipalities are poised to merge to form seven new ones in time for the Oct. 20 local polls, the number of Estonian municipalities is set to drop to 215 from the current 226 as as result of voluntary mergers this year.