16. April 07
Today, on April 16, Justice Minister Rein Lang introduced the development plans and goals of the justice system to the employees of the Ministry and representatives of the institutions in its area of government.
In the case of public law the Minister pointed out that one of the major goals is to draft a new Government of the Republic Act, which would specify the liability of various ministries and agencies more accurately and organise relationships between the state and local authorities.
“As for legislative drafting, one of the main goals is indisputably the drafting of the Environmental Code, Building Code, Social Code and Education Code,” emphasised the Minister.
“For instance, in the field of environmental law we are currently in a state of bolshevist mess where no one has an overview of what laws and regulations are in force and what are not," said the Minister in his speech. “The purpose of environmental acts is to protect the environment without establishing any unnecessary restrictions on people," emphasised Lang. “Furthermore, environmental law must be understandable to people, but at present it is not.”
In the field of building acts the Justice Minister also pointed out a pressing problem, which has been caused by the booming construction business and is bound to become more serious. “I am talking about all these real estate agencies the owners' equity of which is merely 40,000 Estonian kroons and which simply cease to exist after the keys have been handed over to the customer. And all the guarantees vanish with them,” noted Minister Lang.
In terms of procedural codes, one of the priorities in the four years is to improve the competing process in criminal proceedings and to strengthen the payment order system, which should considerably reduce the workload of the courts.
In the field of private law the Minister plans on implementing the Enterprise Law action plan and complete the reform of private law. “More attention needs to be paid to the analysis of the impact of acts,” emphasised Lang. “No act should be adopted without the intention of measuring its impact after a certain time and evaluating whether the act is serving its purpose.”
In the case of courts the Justice Minister spoke of making the court system a whole. “The courts of the first and second instance could be under the Supreme Court, forming a true third power, which functions independently and is liable for its work results," said Minister Lang.
In terms of criminal policy the goal is to adopt the Maintenance of Law and Order Act and developing new criminal policy goals. In addition, the regulation of surveillance activities needs revision. “Here, one of the priorities is supervision of competition, because the consumers should not pay more than a thing is actually worth,” explained the minister. “It seems that these days very many companies do not realise that harmonised pricing is prohibited."
In his speech the Minister also pointed out the development of registers and making them available to ordinary citizens. “I believe that people should not pay for accessing public data, which is gathered and processed by the state anyways. Registers should be available to everyone at all times and online,” emphasised the Minister. “A good example of this is, for instance, free viewing of B-cards of companies, which is functioning well.”
According to Minister Lang, Estonia will continue to reform its prison system, including joining the probation supervision system with the prison system and rehabilitation of people released from prison, in addition to building new prisons. “Our goal still is to eliminate the GULAG system and reduce the number of prisoners,” said Lang.
As for the work organisation of the Ministry, the Justice Minister pointed out improvement of cooperation with civic associations and organisation of representation of the Estonian state. “Cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior is very important in this regard, because in addition to regular meetings of the Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Interior cooperation will be taking place at the level of work groups,” added the Minister.
