Chapter 6: Estonia
MARET MERISAAR * GULNARA ROLL
The right to a healthy environment and to receive environmental information is not included in the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, although Article 53 requires compensation for damages caused to the environment and places an obligation on persons to preserve it.
Several laws dealing with freedom of association have recently been adopted. In June 1996 the Law on Foundations was adopted and in October 1996 the Law on Non-governmental Organizations was adopted. From October 1, 1996, all existing NGOs and foundations have had to be re-registered, which has been a controversial ruling.
The right to free expression has benefited environmental activists, as there are many regular environmental broadcasts, such as the television program "Ozone" every Monday and the Environmental News program every Saturday, both on the state TV channel. Environmental pages in the main newspapers are often merged with Scientific Pages
The right to know is less utilized in Estonia. Public interest in environmental matters is minimal and there are few cases where people turn to the authorities with environmental questions.
The right to petition to a constitutional court does not exist in Estonia, as there is no constitutional court. The court system, established by Article 148 includes county, city and administrative courts, district courts and the National Court, the highest Court of Appeal and the Court of Constitutional Review. Since 1994 one section of the National Court has been established to deal with constitutional issues. Under Article 152 persons may complain of the unconstitutionality of a law or rule or of actions of officials in applying a law in the administrative court.
The right of initiative does not yet exist. Signatures were collected by the Democratic Party in 1995 to include this right in the constitution, but they did not collect the required amount.
Regarding the right of referendum, according to Article 65, referenda may be held upon the action of the parliament. Under Article 105 the parliament may put to referendum draft laws or other national issues. A majority is sufficient to pass the issue. If a draft law fails at the referendum the President must declare special parliamentary elections.
No legislation on organizing local referenda exists in Estonia.
There are plans to join the Espoo Convention and work is going on to prepare for the implementation of the EU Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (Directive 96/61/EC).
Estonia has signed the Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, June 14, 1992.
The Helsinki Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents (1992) was signed on March 18, 1992, but not ratified; and the Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes was ratified on May 3, 1995.
The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (1974 and 1992) was ratified on May 3, 1995.
Municipal government is responsible for implementing state policies on the local level; issuing permits; administering local government-owned natural resources; emergency situations and water supply and sewage works. In Tallinn and Narva the Municipal Environmental Departments act in the rights of a County Environmental Department.
Local governments (municipal boards) can adopt their own regulations to be applied in their territory. These can be opposed by the central authorities should they be in contradiction with the law. Subsidiarity works well in these cases.
While in 1990 the only statement on the public right to access to environmental information was found in the Law on Protecting the Environment, without any provisions specifying the order of this process, this situation has not been changed.
The framework law on nature protection has not been reviewed, as was the plan in 1995, but several acts have been amended, including the Water Act, the Waste Act and the Act on Biodiversity. The Law on Environmental Supervision was updated and adopted in the beginning of December and the draft Law on EIA and Auditing, described thoroughly in the report of 1995, was in its third reading in Parliament on December 15, 1997. It had not been adopted by April 1998. Provisions on access to information can be found in chapter 14 of the draft, indicating that authorities who possess information relevant to the presumed environmental impacts and environmental conditions of the location of the proposed activity shall provide the developer, County Governor, Ministry of Environment and experts access to it. Paragraphs 15 and 168 describe the procedures of notifying the public and interested parties. The latest draft Law on EIA and Auditing contains the shortest list of the activities which should be assessed. This list has become shorter with each revision of the draft.
Article 13 of the draft Law on Ambient Air states that the applicant for the air pollution license should publish a public notice in the newspaper within two weeks of submitting the permit application. The text of this notification should be agreed upon with the permitting authority. Paragraph 18 states that after issuing the air pollution license the permitting authority should publish it in the newspaper at the expense of the applicant.
Paragraph 42 of the Draft Waste Act states that waste permit applications and issued permits should be published in a newspaper at the expense of the applicant one month after submitting the application and issuing the permit. Section 3 of the same paragraph states that permit applications and permits for handling hazardous waste are made public according to a regulation by the Government of the Republic of Estonia.
The Water Act of 1994 (RT 1994, 40, 655) was amended in 1996 (RT 1996, 13, 240, 241) with Chapter 6 "The Account of Water Resources, Water Monitoring and Plan of Water Use", paragraph 38 stating that the account of water resources including data on the water quality, use and users is kept in the state register. Paragraph 37 says that the data collected in water monitoring systems are given to the state water register annually and that the property owner has the right to get information about the results of monitoring taken place on his property.
The draft law on environmental monitoring, which was read in parliament at the end of April 1998, will regulate the order of environmental monitoring and processing of the obtained data, the relations between the persons carrying out the monitoring and the ownership of the data. Paragraph 9 of the law is called "Publishing, using and replying to public requests for environmental monitoring data", but the provisions on access to information are minimal (see II.B.3, below) as compared to the draft from 1996. This law also states that when abnormal or potentially dangerous changes in the environment are found during the measurements, these should be immediately announced by telephone to the nearest Inspectorate.
The Law on State Secrets says that environmental information is not a state secret, but there remain many points of debate. For example it is not clear whether the environmental state of military objects is a state secret or not (Article 2).
The Law on Databases Belonging to the State and Local Governments (RT 1997, 28, 423), (which substitutes the previous Law on State Registers from 1990), contains paragraphs explaining what the future orders on founding new state and local databases should include (chapters 4 and 5). According to these, future regulations on different types of registers and databases will state, inter alia, lists of persons who have the right to receive this data, the order of releasing information, the list of persons who have the right to receive information without payment, sections of the database considered secret, the list of data meant for public use and the method of providing access to them, the method of keeping track of data added to the database as well as releasing them to interested parties, the list of persons supervising the management of databases and the method of financing the databases.
It is impossible to provide open access to the information held at the Ministry of Environment because of the Law on Database Protection (March 1996). Information that is collected in the framework of state statistics can be used only by authorized specialists.
All the laws are posted on the Internet, but a special contract and password must be acquired before these can be publicly accessed. So access to environmental laws is not provided for the general public yet.
Box 1 illustrates the flow of environmental information in Estonia today and the role of the Information Center (IC) (Information courtesy of the IC vice director Andrus Meiner).
| BOX 1: Environmental Information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural resources | Pollution loads | Monitoring data | |
| Character of the information | Databases on land, forest, fish resources (taken into account) | Annual statistical reporting on pollution is obligatory for enterprises. Data is protected by Database Law | In situ measurements in the framework of the state monitoring program. |
| Updating the information | The changes are permanently recorded in the summary balance report | Data is brought into the county boards quarterly, and into the IC once a year | Measurements are permanent and the data goes into the database belonging to the organization making the measurements |
| Producer of the information | Persons keeping the registers, registering departments of the county boards, Center of Forestry Management, Geological Center | Enterprises play the central role, fill out the questionnaires and send these into the County Boards. | Organization fulfilling the monitoring method, (e.g. a research institute, university or enterprise) |
| Who is processing this information? | County Environmental Board | Organization fulfilling the monitoring contract, IC will receive data once a year and also process it | |
| Who is keeping this information | Persons keeping the registers | County Environmental Boards (and the State) Sometimes timely processes for correcting the data from the enterprises take place in the form of letters. | Meta database of the IC, (where and what kind of data can be found?) |
| Who is spreading this information in Estonia? | The IC does not have data on natural resources. The statistical summary "Environment in Numbers" is published by the Statistical Board | Persons keeping the registers presenting annual reports to the Statistical Board, which in turn publishes the "Statistical Yearbook". The IC publishes "Environment" | Summary report "Environmental Monitoring". Has been published by the IC for two years already. |
Much of the information held in ministries other than the Ministry of Environment can be considered environmental information as well, for example the customs statistics on importing goods containing hazardous substances (batteries, pesticides etc.). This category is not mentioned in the Convention. The Ministry of Social Affairs has information about the health of people, the Health Protection Board on the quality of food and on the working environment. The Ministry of Agriculture has data on pesticides and the Radiation Center in the Ministry of Environment has data on hazardous waste.
The Information Center of the Ministry of Environment does not collect information itself, but data is forwarded to it. The database and registers are available only for authorized specialists of the Ministry, the Information Center and the Central Laboratory of Environmental Research.
There is not yet a definition of environmental information in Estonian legislation. The types of environmental information that are collected and stored in databases are shown in Table 1. This table illustrates the type of information held by the Information Center of the Ministry of Environment and by the Statistical Board. The two organizations cooperate and there are overlaps of their information holdings.
Conditions for Obtaining the Information.
As a rule, information may be obtained from all institutions by either sending a written request or visiting the office during office hours. In Spring 1997, the Chancellor of the Ministry of Environment ordered that only department heads may give out information requested by the public. In the Information Center of the Ministry of Environment there is an official responsible for public requests for access to the pollution load information database, which is for internal use only.
Private bodies performing public services may provide consumer information, health protection information, and instructions on where to bring different types of wastes.
Businesses are not obliged to provide environmental information in response to public inquiry. In practice, however, they respond to information requests as they see it beneficial to their interests. Information on pollution loads from business activities is collected quarterly by local authorities and forwarded to the Ministry of Environment's Information Center annually. This data is not for public use.
The deadline for the Ministry of Environment to respond to letters of inquiry is one month for all those not coming from Members of Parliament. The deadline for responding to Parliamentary queries is 10 days. Either the requested information or a refusal must be issued within this time frame.
Everybody has a similar right to receive information without reference to nationality or field of occupation. The secret information categories are stated in the Law on State Secrets and apply to all equally. The new Law on Databases states that each new database must have a statute listing those persons who have a preliminary right to access. There is no regulation regarding the right of the public to specify the form of the provided information (written or electronic).
Refusal to Provide Information
Public authorities can refuse to provide information, including environmental information, if they issue a written explanation for their refusal. Request for information can be refused if the question falls into the category of state secret or of information for internal use by specialists. If the authorities are overloaded with requests, the time frame for replying to the question may be extended to three months.
Presently there is no testing of public interest nor has it been discussed by the relevant authorities.
Informal Guidelines for Agencies and the Public
There are no guidelines for the authorities on how to provide environmental information. There is a general law on responding to public queries. All the conditions contained in it have been described in this report in the section on the conditions of obtaining information. There are also no general guidelines for the public on how to request information.
Specific Institutions/Officials to Provide Information
In the Ministry of Environment all department heads are permitted to give information to the public. In the Information Center there is one employee designated for that purpose. The Statistical Board has Departments of Industrial Policy and Environment which keep information related to the state of the environment. This data is available only to specialists who have submitted an official request. The Health Promotion Boards of the Ministry of Social Affairs respond to questions from the public. On the county level there are no persons designated to provide information, but information requests are not neglected either. In the Town Councils there are office hours for citizens who want to discuss environmental matters; these are not meant for general information searches, but rather for providing information aimed at solving a concrete problem.
If an Authority Does Not Possess the Information
If a public authority does not possess the information requested, it then depends on that individual whether a broader search is initiated in other offices or whether further contacts are provided. If the authority is aware of another agency that can potentially be of assistance, he or she usually provides that information. Authorities, however are not obliged to do so by any regulations.
Within the Ministry of Environment there is a Department of Training and Education which deals with organizing various training courses and seminars for central and local authorities and specialists. The general public is informed via radio and television programs financed by the Ministry, as well as through the publications of the Information Center of the Ministry of Environment and the statistical board.
The Ministry of Environment is reorganizing the work of its Information Center and a public information request specialist has been hired. The information Center issues several annual publications including, "Environment" which is based on summary pollution data and is issued in four volumes. Similarly, the statistical office publishes two publications based on its own environmental data: "Environment in Numbers" (two volumes), the more comprehensive "Statistical Yearbook."
The author of the present report is unaware of obligations in the field of disseminating information to the public. In the case of emergency the public is informed via radio and television channels, and there is a special rescue board which becomes active.
Methods of Dissemination
The most typical method used by public authorities to disseminate information to the interested public is through books and radio broadcasts, as well as on the TV program Environmental News, shown on Saturday evenings. In addition to annual publications, a quarterly information letter has been issued on the monitoring data.
Electronic Means of Dissemination
Environmental information is provided to the public via the above broadcasts as well as through the Ministry's Internet Homepage
Nongovernmental Centers
Of the nongovernmental information centers, the most active have been the Lake Peipsi Project and the Estonian Green Movement. The REC local office has a good library which is visited quite often. The nature protection societies also have good libraries but they are rarely used.
As reported above, the Environmental Information Center is interested in obtaining information on an annual basis only, despite the fact that the county environmental departments obtain returns from industry on a quarterly basis. Conversely, the Inspectorate is interested in obtaining the most up-to-date information available.
"In order to promote environmental awareness, it is necessary:
The draft Action Plan in the Field of Public Environmental Awareness Raising contains fourteen actions to promote environmental education, eight actions to promote access to information, eight activities to promote public participation (mainly to support NGOs) and three activities to promote green consumerism and lifestyles. The actions to elaborate legislation on access to information, decisionmaking and justice are the most highly scored among them.
In the report of 1995 the Ministerial Regulation on EIA Guidelines (adopted in 1994) was described already. This guideline was found to contain all the necessary means to involve public interest groups in the procedure.
The drafting process of the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Auditing began in 1995 and involved lengthy discussions between the Department of Environmental Standards and the Department of Planning, as the latter did not want to obey all the provisions of the EIA law. The latest improvements in the draft were related to its harmonization with EU Directives. On December 15, the law went to final review in the government.
According to paragraph 16 of the Law on EIA, the developer organizes public hearings after: a) the program of EIA is elaborated, and b) the report of the EIA is finalized. Anyone has the right to receive information on the planned activity, to submit written and oral questions and suggestions and to receive answers until the developer has received his/her permit. All the received comments and opinions will be added to the final report. Should these not be taken into account, the developer will provide an explanation.
Only after adopting this law will Estonia enforce the Espoo Convention on solving cross-border environmental problems. This convention also has important provisions on public participation. The bilateral agreements with Latvia on involving the public in the discussions of mutual environmental problems have been fulfilled, and the realization of the latter with Russia and Finland is in the process of being concluded.
The draft Law on Ambient Air contains many provisions on public participation starting from notification of the public about the intention to issue air pollution licenses, up to stating the right of the public to submit written comments and to demand to be heard. (paragraph 13).
The draft Waste Law (paragraph 43) states that those persons who may be affected by the activities for which the permits were issued, may submit written comments to the permitting authority or request to be heard.
In the framework of implementing the IPPC directive, new legislation including integrated pollution licenses, self-monitoring by the industrial enterprises and a system of public control when issuing waste permits is being elaborated. During a recent IPPC seminar the MoE and County Environmental Department representatives decided that a unified regulation describing the procedure of licensing (for air, water or waste permits) is necessary. The adoption of an Irish model, which includes public hearings, was discussed.
The public holds no separate right to initiate referenda on environment-related issues, and there have been no cases where authorities have been bound to call referenda.
The right of initiative is still not held by the public. Signatures were collected in 1995 to include this right in the constitution, but an insufficient number were collected. There are no laws or provisions of the laws on public participation for drafting documents either at the parliamentary or governmental level. This right is held only by members of parliament.
Public initiatives can be said to exist only as far as officials of the various ministries are also members of the public. Most new regulations are drafted by specialists working in the institutions or universities contracted by one of the ministries. The minister will take the draft bills to the government and parliament, but this should not be considered an initiative directly from the public.
As was discussed in the introduction, NGO participation in drafting governmental environmental policy documents has gained strength in the past three years. While five years ago it was rare for a representative of an environmental organization to be invited to participate in an ad hoc governmental working group drafting some regulation or law, this has now become more common. Already last year in compiling the Estonian National Environmental Strategy, 90 percent of the NGO proposals were taken into account and incorporated into the text of the strategy.
The drafting of the National Environmental Action Plan took place in 1997, and the number of NGO representatives in the working groups and advisory board was considerable. The largest number of NGOs were involved in the working groups dealing with environmental awareness raising and biodiversity. In the forums, which included up to 200 participants, the presence of NGO representatives made up about 10 percent.
There are no privileged groups in this process and there have been no practical cases in which the opinions of some older NGOs have been privileged compared to those of others.
The requirement to take into account input from the general public is stated in both the Law on Planning and Building and in the Ministerial regulation on the order of carrying out EIA (1992).
It is difficult to assess how effective this potential for influencing decisions has been, but in general it can be said that it has had an effect - if not at the beginning of the drafting process, then at the end of it.
The practice of notifying individuals and NGOs has been assessed in a study carried out by the Tallinn branch of the Stockholm Environment Institute, according to which the public has been involved in only 173 of the EIA procedures. Notification takes place via local newspapers, and advertisements are placed as well. One of the reasons for limited participation is low public interest. There have been no privileged groups in this practice. A study by SEI Tallinn has shown that 70 percent of EIA procedures take place without public participation.
The biggest barriers for the public have been the quickness of the procedure, insufficient work by lobbying groups and insufficient access to information.
Notification usually consists of information on the time and place where the public can become acquainted with the plans or draft documents. The content of these documents has not usually been given.
It is difficult to give an example of a transparent decisionmaking process where the public failed to influence the result, as individuals and NGOS are usually not allowed to participate in the sessions of Parliament and parliamentary committees. The only direct public participation in this area is on those occasions where specialists have been invited to parliamentary sessions. In that case, they have had the right to give written comments to the process.
The meetings of the Parliament Environ-mental Commission are closed to the public, except to invited specialists. Once a draft document is placed on the floor of Parliament for the first reading it is a public document, and there is the possibility for public participation during the three obligatory readings before a law can be adopted. This process is occasional and the right to participate is used by members of parliament only. Parliament rarely holds public hearings on laws and regulations.
One especially negative example of this took place in the readings of the Law on Research and Development Organization, a public hearing of which was held in March 1997 with the participation of five MPs (Andres Tarand, Mart Laar, Endel Lippmaa, Uno Mereste and Liia Hänni, who all were well known scientists before entering politics) and 80 directors of scientific institutes. More than 100 proposals for improving the law were presented, yet none was taken into account. The explanation was that the last date for submitting proposals was just two days before the public hearing and that the parliamentarians only wanted to see what would happen at such a hearing.
A positive example of a public hearing was the one on the Estonian Energy Strategy, which included NGO representatives, specialists, business representatives and parliamentarians, which was given in the introduction of this paper. This joint forum was organized by the Global Legislators Organization for Better Environment (GLOBE) in collaboration with the Estonian Green Movement. The first REC Estonian representative held a speech regarding Estonia's position on the European map in terms of public participation rights. As it was stated in the Capacity 21 Forum, on December 17, 1997, the Energy Strategy was significantly changed in the following year, although there were many discussions held and the changes were not made immediately.
The draft National Environmental Action Plan calls for environmental awareness raising as its first priority. To do this it is proposed to organize open meetings of the Parliament Environmental Commission outside Tallinn including local inhabitants and NGOs. This idea was taken from Polish experiences via the REC Status Report in 1995. By the time this report is published, the NEAP final version will be completed and we will see if the proposal finds its way into the official state policy document.
The only governmental funding focused on public participation projects and public participation training may come from the Environmental Fund, but until now the share of that funding in the total sum has not been fixed. There is a proposal in the NEAP public awareness raising chapter to fix that amount at 10 percent of the total and to include a representative from the Ministry of Education in distributing this "educational money".
These constitutional provisions have been used many times in arguments in cases brought before courts.
The term "right of legal standing" is not used in the Estonian legislative system, as it originates from the American system while Estonia uses the German, but the right to participate in the process (by listening in the court hall) is free to every citizen without taking into account his/her citizenship, nationality, or even the presence of a "legal public interest." This right is stated in both the Law on Civil Process and the Law on Criminal Process. The only exception, when no one can listen in on the process, is special exemption (for example in the case of the civil process for the adoption of a child or when sexual abuse is discussed), or in the case of criminal process when confidential business secrets may become public. In open cases, all participants have the right to observe, but not to give written comments or to speak up unless asked to do so by the lawyer.
Individuals and NGOs may sue a legal act or action of any public authority in the administrative court - if they feel that the latter limits their constitutional rights - without any "test" used. This right is obtained by both individuals as well as by legal persons, including units of local governments. Any union of persons, including those who are not registered as a legal entity, can go to the administrative court to protect the rights of its members or other persons, if the statute of that union, their founding act or a law provides them such a right.
To start a court process in the administrative court, a person must submit a complaint to the court. The complaint must be submitted in written form and it should contain the following data:
There have been no cases concerning the lack of provision of environmental information, so the rate of receiving the solution cannot be assessed.
The time limits of an ordinary process initiated by an environmental inspector start from the issue of the notification (protocol) submitting the latter to the court, which then has two months to discuss it, after which a decision is announced in three days.
The minimum time limit to obtain a final decision to appeal an environmental administrative decision is two months, but if the case is forwarded to a higher level court, the decision may take six months or longer.
In case a public official fails to enforce laws, he/she will be sent to another job. In case a public authority has broken a law, it will be punished by official supervising structures. Private persons and organizations have not initiated a court case yet, although the administrative law allows this.
In each court case there is a possibility that the initiator will apply for reimbursement of part or all of the costs, and for each case the court will make this decision. The opposite party must have that money to pay, otherwise the decision itself cannot recover these finances. There is a special list of persons who are in the privileged group from the point of view of decreased payments for the court case: this includes mothers, retired people, persons with low income, etc., But they must first file a special application.
Mechanisms to Ensure Flow of Information from the Private Sector to the Public Authorities or the Public
Local pollution monitoring at the county level is performed quarterly and the summary data is forwarded to the Information Center of the Ministry of Environment annually. The Information Center itself is not interested in this information and therefore does not update it quarterly. This is a problem for the environment inspectors who would like to have information updated more frequently. The pollution monitoring process is mandatory but the results are for internal use only.
BOX 2: Environmental Information Flow in Estonia
This diagram illustrates the complexity of environmental information flow (on pollution loads) from private businesses at the moment. Despite the intricate network, problems exist in the access to information by the State Inspectorate and the frequency in which information is collected and distributed.
As it was reported above, the Environmental Center is interested in obtaining information on an annual basis only, despite the fact that the county environmental departments obtain returns from industry on a quarterly basis. Conversely, the Inspectorate is interested in obtaining the most up-to-date information available.Public Participation
Legislation on Public Participation
The Estonian National Environmental Strategy, adopted in 1996, considers public awareness-raising its top priority. As written, the strategy's goal is "to preserve and to stimulate the Estonian tradition of environmental awareness, to promote public participation in environmental decisionmaking, active environmental protection and supervision; to encourage future generations to adopt environmentally sound consumption habits and to support further development of environmentally sound consumption patterns.
Public Participation Provisions in the Environmental Laws
According to the approximation report of the PHARE DISAE project, the only environmental law in compliance with EU directive 90/313/EEC is the Law on Building and Planning which contains the full description of informing the public on the plans and procedures of public hearings and submitting comments by the public, as well as the order of taking the latter into account and publishing them in the annex of the plan.Public Control of Decisionmaking (Direct Democracy)
The right of referendum is not a public right, but the public can influence deputies elected by them to organize one. According to Article 65, referenda may be held at the initiation of parliament. Under Article 105 the parliament may put to referendum draft laws or other national issues. A majority vote is sufficient to pass the issue. If a draft law fails at a referendum, the president must declare special parliamentary elections.Public Shares Power to Decide
The government's formation of paid ad hoc drafting committees for the preparation of laws, including the use of some NGO experts as well, was described in the report of 1995. As was stated then, this practice depends on personal contacts and is not regulated by any rules. Within the Ministry of Environment, NGOs have participated in drafting documents on EIA, nature protection objects, radiation, air, planning and construction. Waste management issues have been more closed to outside participation.Account of Public Comments
The right of individuals and NGOs to have their opinions taken into account has been stated explicitly in two documents: the Ministerial Order on the Procedures of EIA and the Law on Planning and Building. This right will be included in the Law on Ambient Air which is soon to be adopted as well. It is a right that has seldom been used in practice.Adequate Notification of the Public
There is no precedent for regular notification of an NGO or an interest group about law-making and policymaking. The Estonian Green Movement has acquired various draft bills and papers on its own initiative and through personal contacts. Some other NGO experts (from the Estonian Fund for Nature and the Estonian Nature Protection Society) have been invited to comment on some draft laws.Decisionmaking is Transparent
Possibility to Influence DecisionmakingMechanisms to Influence Decisionmaking - Lobby Mechanisms
There is no fixed mechanism for environmental lobbying of NGOs. Lobby work does take place, as Estonia is a small country and people are in contact both during and after office hours. But there are no professional lobbyists established with a fixed number of working days. There is no environmental NGO lobbyist present in parliament, nor are there any laws on regulating these activities. A discussion of such an idea in the working group meeting of the NEAP process produced several jokes.Capacity Building
There have been several training sessions for local authorities dealing with public participation. These sessions for governmental officials include training on EIA procedures for the County Environmental Board Authorities and the on-going NEAP process.Access to Justice
General Legal Rights and Sources of Law
Under Article 152 of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, a person may complain of the unconstitionality of a law or rule or the actions of public officials in applying a law in the administrative court. In Estonia, the administrative court was founded in 1993 as an institution protecting the subjective public rights of private persons against violations of power by the authorities. Denial of access to environmental information, failure to allow public participation and environmental issues are not specified in the constitution. But Article 25 of the constitution provides that all persons shall have the right for compensation for moral and material injuries caused by any person's unlawful action.Administrative Standing
Legislation regulating access to justice has not changed during the last three years. The National Environmental Strategy adopted in 1997 states that special units for solving environmental cases should be founded in the administrative court.
TABLE 1: Administrative Standing
In the administrative decisionmaking process
In the administrative appeal of administrative decisionmaking process
Individuals
every person
X
X
interested/affected
X
X
NGOs
everyone
X
X
interested/affected
X
X
Standing in Actions Against Government Agencies
According to the Administrative Law, public authorities are bodies executing state power, local governments, and bodies of public legal persons. In some cases the public power may be executed by private legal persons who have been given such a right by a law or an administrative contract. These are the president, the Government of the Republic, ministries, boards, inspectorates and their local branches, county governments, municipal boards, universities etc. Private individuals and unions of individuals who are not legal persons (NGOs), can sue over single legal acts that do not generate justice. If the act issued by the public authority limits someone's basic rights and liberties, or contains obligatory abstract rules of behavior, it should be taken to the National Court. It is also possible to sue an action taken by an authority carrying out public power (for either doing something, refusing to do something or just having unnecessary delays in action). See Table 2 for a summary.
TABLE 2: Legal Standing Against Government
Special administrative court
Civil court
Criminal court
Arbitration court or special economic courts
Constitutional court
Individuals
every person
X
-
-
-
X
interested/affected
X
-
-
-
X
NGOs
everyone
X
-
-
-
X
interested/affected
X
-
-
-
X
Standing in Action Against Polluters
Legislation provides individuals and NGOs (who are legal persons with private persons' rights) the right to go to court in legal actions against polluters in case of the latter causing some material damage to them (cases against businesses, enterprises, other economic entities will be solved in the administrative court; and cases against individuals in civil court). In case an enterprise would want to sue an individual, the process would be held in administrative court. In civil court cases the process will be solved on a competitive bases, which means that the person in litigation should bring and prove adequate and sufficient evidence of his/her claim.
TABLE 3: Legal Standing Against Polluters
Special administrative court
Civil court
Criminal court
Arbitration court or special economic courts
Constitutional court
Individuals
every person
X
X
-
-
-
interested/affected
X
X
-
-
-
NGOs
everyone
X
X
-
-
-
interested/affected
X
X
-
-
-
Remedies and Enforcement
Injunctive Relief
Individuals and NGOs as yet have no possibility of obtaining injunctive relief in cases against public authorities or enterprises.Enforcement of Judgements
Court judgements are independent and are made on the basis of the law and speciality of the case. In every larger town, there is an institution called the Department of Surveillance of Enforcement of Judgements. These institutions do not act on their own initiative, but the party who wins the court case has the right to persuade fulfillment of the decision through them.Court Expenses
The costs of a private person or an NGO initiating a court case would be the following:
Legal Assistance
Public Interest Environmental Lawyers
There are no nongovernmental legal advisory centers supporting environmental court cases yet in Estonia.Commercial Lawyers
As for commercial barristers, there certainly might be some of them, who have advised an environmental procedure, but the author of this report cannot suggest a certain case. All barristers are now "private" in Estonia.Ombudsman
There is no environmental ombudsman institution in Estonia yet, but the Environmental Strategy of 1997 and the National Environmental Action Plan (to be adopted in spring 1998) will foresee this authority in the future.
