Estonia needs to address corruption issues, says report

Estonia should be more transparent in terms of political party financing and state procurement contests, a major corruption report shows.

In its first ever anti corruption report, the European Commission recommends Estonia to make the order of making donations to parties more transparent and make the control over the donations more efficient.

The supervision of organizing state procurement contests should be improved and it must be observed that state procurement contests conducted for state or EU funds were fulfilled properly.

The report proposes to compile instructions for procurement supervision to local municipalities and guarantee that municipalities have the rights to prescribe sufficient administrative punishments against violators.

The report also states that a code of ethics for member of parliament should be approved immediately whilst an efficient supervision and punishment mechanism against MPs who violate the code devised. The supervision over the economic interests and declarations of MPs should also be more efficient.

The report recommends Estonia also a thorough analysis over how big the danger of state and municipality officials towards politicization is.

Latest statistics from Eurobarometer show how 65 percent of Estonians think that corruption is widely spread in Estonia (EU average is over 75 percent). In the business sector, 19 percent of companies consider corruption a problem while in EU the average is 43 percent.

Estonian Justice Minister Hanno Pevkur said that Estonia can be generally satisfied with the report.

"We are in the same group with France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Holland, where the contact of people with corruption has been evaluated as small and corruption perception as average," said Pevkur

"If we look at the three recommendations made to Estonia by the European Commission, we have to note that there was nothing unexpected there."