Was KIK obliged to recover the EUR 920,566.08 grant awarded to Anija Rural Municipality Government where the beneficiary exceeded the deadline laid down in the measure regulation for initiating the public procurement procedure, or did the administrative authority nevertheless retain discretion in that situation?
The direct underlying materials, namely the text of the measure regulation or the provisions governing the establishment of KIK and the award of grants, are not available here. I therefore rely on the general principle of administrative law: if a regulation states a deadline as a binding requirement, the administrative authority must proceed from it. However, when adopting an administrative decision, the authority is always subject to the requirements under administrative procedure law to establish the facts and legal basis, as well as to the principle of proportionality.
Accordingly, it cannot be inferred as a general principle that exceeding a deadline automatically excludes any discretion. That is a question which cannot be answered conclusively without the text of the specific measure regulation.
The underlying materials contain no case law, and therefore this section cannot be provided.
The statement in the article that “the deadline is set out in the measure regulation and the official has no discretion” is truncated and too absolute. The underlying material presented, namely the conditions and procedure for supporting museum projects, indicates that a decision to recover a grant may be made within three years from the end of performance of the beneficiary’s last obligation. This means that recovery is a decision linked to time and circumstances, not an automatic consequence.
The article failed to mention that exceeding a deadline does not yet mean that the official must necessarily withdraw the grant. A recovery decision is a separate administrative decision, the legal basis and available options for which depend on the terms of the specific measure regulation, which the news item does not disclose. A more precise formulation would be that KIK assessed the missed deadline as a breach of the conditions of the measure regulation and decided to revoke the award, but this does not mean, as a general matter, that discretion is absent in every grant measure.
For a beneficiary, the decisive issue is not only the completion deadline, but all interim and commencement deadlines laid down in the measure regulation. Anija Municipality’s error was precisely that it monitored only the completion deadline set for the end of 2029 and overlooked the six-month deadline for initiating the procurement. In practice, this means that the terms of the grant agreement or award decision must be documented and entered into the calendar in all relevant directions, including deadlines calculated from the start of the eligibility period, because exceeding them may lead to the revocation of an already awarded grant of EUR 920,000 even where the project itself is substantively in order.
At the same time, the municipal government retains an argument worth assessing for any further dispute: if the deadline in the measure regulation is established without exceptions or any possibility of extension, the question is whether the principle of proportionality and the general requirements of administrative procedure could allow such a consequence to be avoided in the case of human error. The strength of that argument, however, cannot be assessed with confidence without the text of the measure regulation and the legal basis of KIK’s decision. The submission of a new application to the same measure, which ended up at the bottom of the queue, demonstrates another risk: released funding is not guaranteed to the beneficiary, so correcting the mistake after the deadline has passed provides practically no remaining assurance.
The decision granting an operating permit for remote gambling specifies the particular internet addresses through which the company may offer gambling, and therefore it is the domain, not the brand, that must be checked.
Upon entry in the restrictions list in respect of games of chance, the minimum period ranges from six months to 36 months, and the restriction cannot be removed before the selected period has expired.
In Estonia, the right to organise gambling depends on two Estonian authorisations: an activity licence and an operating permit for the specific activity, pursuant to § 9(1) of the Gambling Act (HasMS). The core point of the news discussion is that an Estonian-language website, a price list in euros, and a foreign licence do not create a right to offer remote gambling on the Estonian market. The legal question that arises is what requirements a remote gambling operator must meet in Estonia and how a player can verify which operators are licensed. The decision granting an operating permit for remote gambling specifies the particular internet addresses through which the game may be offered. Accordingly, the object of verification is not the brand, but the specific domain, and the most reliable source is the public list of lawful operators maintained by the Tax and Customs Board, including business names, trademarks, web addresses, and permits.
Operators are subject to the obligations set out in § 53 of the Gambling Act: they must ensure that minors are excluded from gambling, identify each player, and record the player’s name, personal identification code, and the times of entry into and exit from the gaming environment. Section 53(2) of the Gambling Act further requires record-keeping concerning stakes, refunds, and winnings; payments only to the player’s own account; and disclosure to the player of the operator’s name and address, the decision numbers of the activity licence and operating permit, the rules of the game, costs, and a warning regarding the risk of addiction. In addition, the electronic accounting and control system of a remote gambling operator must be connected to the information system of the Tax and Customs Board, which gives the authority a real capacity for supervision. In relation to an applicant for an activity licence, the Tax and Customs Board assesses reliability: persons with qualifying holdings, beneficial owners, and managers must not fall within disqualifying conditions such as having a criminal conviction or participation in an undertaking that has organised gambling without authorisation. Under § 20 of the Gambling Act, an activity licence may be revoked, among other grounds, where the operator has organised gambling without an operating permit, has repeatedly and materially breached obligations imposed by law, or has committed an intentional tax offence. For the player, an Estonian licence also provides an effective self-exclusion mechanism: entry in the restrictions list in respect of games of chance is possible for a period from six months to 36 months, and a holder of an operating permit may not provide gambling services to a restricted person.
For a player, gambling on an unauthorised website means that the Tax and Customs Board has no information regarding the reliability of that operator, and assistance may not be available if problems arise; consumer protection remedies do not extend to a foreign undertaking. For the operator, the risk is revocation of the activity licence on the grounds set out in § 20 of the Gambling Act, including for offering gambling without an operating permit or for repeated material breaches of obligations. In practice, this is important above all for the player before making a deposit: the operating company, the cited licence, and the inclusion of the specific domain in the Tax and Customs Board’s list must be checked.
Section 2(1) of the Penal Code provides that no one may be convicted of an act that was not an offence under the law in force at the time of its commission; consequently, a new tax obligation cannot apply retroactively.
The tax authority can facilitate the payment of taxes and intervene in cases of avoidance, but deciding on the imposition of taxes and the use of tax revenue does not fall within its competence.
In the case of this news item, the individuals and companies mentioned are not facing court proceedings or a sanction, but a legislative decision: the Riigikogu must adopt the State Budget Act for 2027, the draft of which has already been submitted to Parliament. The direct legal issue therefore concerns the legislative budget procedure and the justification for the distribution of the tax burden, rather than the application of existing law to a specific case. The Prime Minister’s promise, cited in the news item, of a “responsible and fair budget” is a political commitment, the legal content of which can be assessed only through the adopted Budget Act and the accompanying amendments to tax legislation. The cited legal sources concern criminal and misdemeanour proceedings and do not contain rules on budgeting or the imposition of taxes, and therefore do not provide a directly applicable rule for this situation. Accordingly, the core of the news item is the relationship of trust between the state and the taxpayer as a premise of legislation, rather than an existing legal norm and its breach.
Of the sources provided, only the general principle that no one may be punished for an act that was not an offence under the law in force at the time it was committed is applicable, because it confirms that a tax obligation must likewise be based on valid law and cannot arise retroactively. Section 2(1) of the Penal Code provides that no one may be convicted of an act that was not an offence under the law in force at the time of its commission, and section 3(1) defines an offence as a punishable act provided for in the Code. This means that if, in the course of the budget debate, the state imposes a new tax or increases, for example, excise duty on energy products, that obligation will apply only from the entry into force of the law, and not before. The excise duty increase mentioned in the news item is planned for the following year, that is, 2027, and its legal basis will arise only once the relevant law has been adopted and entered into force. The role of the tax authority is circumscribed in the news item: it can facilitate the payment of taxes and intervene in cases of avoidance, but deciding on the imposition of taxes and the use of tax revenue does not fall within its competence. The sources provided contain no case law and no provisions of budgetary or tax legislation, and therefore do not allow an assessment of whether the proposed budget complies with any specific legal norm. Procedurally, what matters is that the decision-making takes place in the Riigikogu, and the Prime Minister’s statement that the budget balance cannot be changed in Parliament indicates that the scope of debate lies in the budget bill procedure before the Riigikogu.
The practical consequences most directly concern taxpayers and businesses, whose tax burden will depend on whether the Riigikogu adopts the budget with the planned excise duty increases or not. If the excise duty increase is abandoned, the government, according to the logic set out in the news item, must indicate which expenditures will be reduced or which other revenues will be used to finance them. For businesses, it is important that frequent tax changes reduce certainty and make investment and budgeting plans uncertain; accordingly, a stable environment of tax rules is a value in itself. The draft State Budget Act has been submitted to the Riigikogu, and the next step is the budget debate and final decision-making in the Riigikogu.
Under the applicable regulation, a certificate of succession is authenticated in respect of heirs who are known to the notary, whose right of succession and the extent of that right have been proved, and who have not renounced the estate.
If a person’s right of succession has been established by a court judgment, that judgment replaces the certificate of succession, and the operative part must state all information that the law requires to be included in the certificate of succession (Law of Succession Act § 171(7)).
The position of a person who has proved their right of succession in court is strong in this situation: the notary must issue a certificate of succession to the person whose right of succession and the extent of that right have been proved, and a four-year delay is, in the Chancellor of Justice’s assessment, inconsistent with that obligation. The core of the news item is the notary’s failure to perform an official act, not a challenge to the substance of the right of succession. The legal question is therefore whether a notary may regard a right of succession proved by a court judgment as erroneous in the notary’s own assessment and postpone authentication on that basis. This is resolved under §§ 167–171 of the Law of Succession Act and §§ 18–19 of the relevant regulation, which determine the procedure for notarial acts and authentication in succession proceedings.
In the proceedings, the notary is obliged to make inquiries with registers and authorities (Law of Succession Act § 167(2): matrimonial property register, traffic register, securities register, land register, population register, pension centre, courts database) and, no later than two working days after initiating the proceedings, to publish a notice in Official Announcements (Law of Succession Act § 168(1)). Where there are material discrepancies and contradictions in applications and written confirmations, the notary may summon the persons concerned to discuss the discrepancies and draw up a record (regulation § 18(2)); this is the statutory method for resolving doubts, not a basis for indefinitely postponing authentication. The certificate of succession must state, among other matters, the basis of succession, the heir’s details, and the notional shares of the estate (regulation § 19(1)). The notary has the right to require written confirmations and documents from an heir (regulation § 18(1)), but the sources do not confer authority on the notary to substitute the notary’s own assessment of the correctness of the right of succession for a court judgment. If the notary doubts the constitutionality of a provision, that is addressed through a separate review procedure, not by failing to perform an official act; the sources do not indicate a procedural solution for such a doubt.
In practice, this means that, in the event of a notary’s inaction, the heir may seek performance of the notarial act and pursue administrative supervision, because the transfer of property to a person with a proved right of succession remains restricted: land register and other registry entries, as well as disposal of estate property, require a certificate of succession or a court judgment replacing it. For the notary, it is important that compliance with the conditions for authentication be documented, because the details of a certificate of succession that has been declared invalid are entered in the succession register together with the number of the decision, making the consequences of erroneous authentication traceable. From the standpoint of legal certainty, third parties are protected precisely by the accurate statement in the certificate of the basis of succession and the shares in the estate. Point to monitor: the Chancellor of Justice’s critical assessment directs the notary toward authenticating the certificate of succession; no specific deadline or further decision is apparent from the sources, so the notary’s decision on authentication or the continuation of the proceedings remains to be expected.
Under § 12(2) of the Employment Contracts Act, an employment contract is deemed to have been concluded as soon as the employee commences work which, in light of the circumstances, can be presumed to be performed only for remuneration, and breach of the formal requirement does not render the contract void.
Failure by the employer to comply with the obligation to inform the employee of the required information (§ 5(1)) is punishable under § 117(1) of the Employment Contracts Act by a fine of up to 300 fine units, and, in the case of a legal person, up to EUR 32,000.
In the case of a person who has come to Estonia from Ukraine or another third country for work, who is not paid wages and has no written contract, an employment relationship nevertheless exists if the work is performed for remuneration. The employer must pay wages to such an employee even where it has not provided work or has delayed accepting the work; this is provided for in § 35 of the Employment Contracts Act. If the amount of remuneration has not been agreed or the agreement cannot be proven, § 29(2) of the Employment Contracts Act applies: remuneration is the amount prescribed in a collective agreement or, failing that, the amount customarily paid for similar work in similar circumstances. Failure by the employer to comply with the obligation to inform the employee of working conditions is also punishable, meaning that the absence of a contract does not leave the employee without protection.
An employee who is not paid wages has a claim for payment of remuneration and compensation for amounts unpaid; where the employment relationship continues, the employee is entitled to claim compensation for damage, in particular lost wages (§ 108 of the Employment Contracts Act). Similarly punishable are failure to comply with the obligation to provide information on an employment contract of indefinite duration and the possibility of working (§ 120), and failure to comply with restrictions on working time (§ 122); in each case, the fine may be up to 300 fine units for a natural person and up to EUR 32,000 for a legal person. Supervision of compliance with these requirements is carried out by the Labour Inspectorate (§ 115(1) of the Employment Contracts Act), which has the right to apply the special state supervision measures provided for in §§ 30, 31, 32, 49, 50 and 51 of the Law Enforcement Act. The employee is also protected against adverse treatment for relying on their rights or drawing attention to their infringement (§ 2¹ of the Employment Contracts Act). Any agreement derogating to the detriment of the employee is void (§ 2 of the Employment Contracts Act), so the employer cannot, whether contractually or orally, agree terms that deprive the employee of wages.
In practical terms, the most important point for Ukrainians and other third-country nationals is that an employment relationship exists even without a written contract, and a claim for remuneration can be proven through the circumstances in which the work was performed. The employer’s risk is a fine of up to 300 fine units or up to EUR 32,000, as well as the obligation to pay wages retroactively. The employee may apply to the Labour Inspectorate, which carries out state supervision and may issue a precept to the employer.