The second and third reading of the bill of implementing provisions of the Registered Partnership Act which received more than 300 amendment proposals from the opposition will not take place this year in the Estonian parliament and therefore the civil partnership law will take effect of Jan. 1 without implementing provisions.
Chairman of the parliamentary legal affairs committee and member of the Social Democratic Party (SDE) Heljo Pikhof said that on Thursday the committee discussed the amendment proposals made by the Free Party and the Conservative People's Party (EKRE) and which, in her opinion, are at variance with the idea behind the law. «If the aim of the law is to create legal clarity and certainty, the amendment proposals have the opposite goal: to create confusion and unintelligibility,» Pikhof said.
Since the committee did not finish discussing all the amendment proposals on Thursday, the committee did not propose to the parliament's board to put the second reading of the bill on next Thursday's agenda. This year's final sitting of the parliament will take place next Thursday, after which the next sitting will take place on Jan. 11.
According to Pikhof the committee is planning to continue discussing the bill and send it to the plenary assembly of the Riigikogu in January, but on Jan. 1 the Registered Partnership Act will take place without the implementing provisions.
Parliamentary group of EKRE submitted 260 amendment proposals to the bill and the Free Party group 81 proposals. In addition, the SDE group made 10 proposals and Reform Party MP Yoko Alender five, which means that a total of 356 proposal were submitted.
At the end of November the civil partnership bill passed its first reading in the Riigikogu with votes 42 to 41 and 11 abstentions. Ninety-four members of the 101-seat chamber were present during the vote.
The implementing provisions would change more than 80 laws. The bill of implementing provisions was initiated by 38 MPs.
The gender neutral Registered Partnership Act was adopted by the previous lineup of the Riigikogu.
The implementing provisions are necessary, among other things, to be able to enter a registered partnership into the national register and determine the maintenance obligation between partners as well as succession rights.
According to Yoko Alender, Reform Party MP, member of the parliamentary equal treatment association and one of the 38 MPs who initiated the bill of implementing provisions of the Registered Partnership Act, people who want to register their partnership after Jan. 1 should turn to a notary in spite of the law's implementing provisions not being adopted yet.
«The Registered Partnership Act has been adopted and implementing provisions are a technical supplement to the law. The Riigikogu has to process a law in accordance with the rules and regulations,» Alender told BNS. «We will continue working with the amendment proposals submitted to the implementing provisions. If processing hundreds of empty amendment proposals and paying the parliament's advisers for night work from tax payers' pockets is considered a victory, Conservative People's Party is accomplishing it,» Alender said.
«People have the right to turn to notaries as of Jan. 1 to register their partnership,» Alender said. She added that some notaries have already said in the media that they are ready to register partnerships without implementing provisions. «People also have the right to demand that the law is implemented in court. We hope and will continue working toward it in the parliament that implementing provisions are adopted as soon as possible,» she added.