Correction. Lepalaane's assertion that a vacant position should have been offered to her upon her redundancy is legally incomplete: the obligation under Section 89(3) applies only "where possible" and only before notice of termination is given, meaning the employer must offer alternative employment only if a suitable position — or one attainable through retraining — actually exists and offering it would not entail disproportionately high costs. The article also failed to mention that the decisive question in assessing the lawfulness of a redundancy is not the mere existence of vacant positions, but whether the reorganisation of work genuinely rendered the continuation of the employment relationship impossible — if the work tasks are simply redistributed among other employees without proof of a substantive abolition of the position, this constitutes a sham redundancy which is not covered by Section 89(1). Nor is it mentioned that the notice of termination must be justified in writing (Section 95(2) of the Employment Contracts Act) and that the views of employees' representatives must be sought regarding the termination, and any failure to take those views into account must be justified. [PRAKTIINE_REIKSME]: Before the labour dispute committee, Lepalaane's strongest argument is not so much the failure to fill vacant positions, but the fact that, in her own words, her role remained unchanged and she was never asked to hand over her duties — if the employer cannot prove in writing that a reorganisation of work actually took place and rendered the continuation of the employment relationship impossible, there is no basis under Section 89(1) and the redundancy is sham. The employer's risk is that the reasoning in the notice of termination must correspond to reality: a formal abolition of a position under which the substantive work remains the same does not meet the statutory standard. In practice, it is advisable for the employee to immediately record and document that their work tasks continue to be performed by other employees, and to verify whether, before the notice was given, the possibility of offering alternative employment was assessed and documented together with a weighing of the costs — the absence of such an assessment is difficult to defend in court.
Under ECA § 89(3), before terminating on grounds of redundancy, the employer must, where possible, offer the employee other work and, if necessary, arrange supplementary training or modify working conditions, provided this does not entail disproportionately high costs.
If the termination proves to be justified, the employee is entitled, under ECA § 100(1), to compensation in the amount of one month's average wages, as well as insurance benefit in the event of redundancy under the conditions prescribed in the Unemployment Insurance Act.
The redundancy of the head of ensemble planning at the National Opera means that the legal basis for the termination of his employment is extraordinary termination of the employment contract on economic grounds, for which the legislature has established strict preconditions and procedural obligations for the employer. The factual news is that Helen Lepalaan considers the redundancy to be sham and intends to turn to the labour dispute committee. The question that arises is whether the continuation of the employment relationship on the agreed terms has indeed become impossible due to the reorganisation of work, and whether the employer has fulfilled all obligations preceding the termination. The resolution rests on Section 89 of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA), under subsection 1 of which an employment contract may be extraordinarily terminated if the continuation of the employment relationship becomes impossible due to a decrease in the volume of work or the reorganisation of work. The legal nature of redundancy is characterised by the fact that it is not a termination based on the employee's culpable conduct or abilities, but on grounds arising from the employer's organisational needs.
Lepalaan's claims concern three aspects that can be examined through the ECA provisions. Lepalaan claims that there were one or two vacant positions at the National Opera that were not offered to her. Second, ECA § 95(2) requires the employer to justify the termination in a form reproducible in writing; according to Lepalaan, she was merely told that her work tasks had come to an end, which may mean that the justification was not sufficiently specific or in writing. Third, ECA § 89(1) presupposes that the volume of work has actually decreased or the work has been reorganised — if the previous work tasks have simply been distributed among other employees without the substantive volume of work having decreased, the redundancy may prove to be sham. Under ECA § 88(4), the employer may terminate only on a valid reason, and ECA § 87 requires that extraordinary termination take place only on a valid reason prescribed by law. If the employer fails to prove that it terminated the employment contract on a ground permitted by law, the termination is deemed to have occurred on a prohibited ground within the meaning of ECA § 92(1) or to be otherwise unlawful, which gives the employee the right to demand reinstatement of the employment relationship or compensation.
If the labour dispute committee finds that the redundancy was sham or that the employer violated the requirements of ECA § 89(3) or § 95, the consequence may be reinstatement of the employment relationship or an award of compensation to the employee. In practice, this is significant both for the employee, who must prove that the redundancy was sham, and for the employer, which must be able to prove the reality of the reorganisation of work and, where another job was to be offered, that such an offer was made. For the management of the National Opera, this means that evidence must be presented for every step of the redundancy procedure upon review by a court or committee.
"At present, the regulation requires at least 102 round-the-clock brigades but does not prescribe their staffing. Going forward, at least 106 brigades must operate around the clock, supplemented by daytime brigades."
"There must be at least 92 three-member brigades, meaning the majority will remain three-member crews."
The decision-making stage concerning changes to the emergency medical services network will soon bring new funding and staffing conditions for emergency care providers, the basis of which derives from statute and a ministerial regulation rather than from free agreement. Such a transition is enabled by Section 17(3)(1) of the Health Services Organisation Act, under which the minister responsible for the field establishes the number of publicly funded emergency medical brigades pursuant to that Act. Since the new regulation alters both the number of round-the-clock and daytime brigades and clarifies staffing concepts, each provider's future operations depend on that regulation and on the procurements that follow it. The legal question is therefore twofold: who and when confirms the network parameters, and on what basis and under what conditions providers will thereafter render the service and receive payment. The number and location of service areas and the distribution of brigades are confirmed by the Health Board pursuant to Section 17¹(1)(2) of the Health Services Organisation Act. Regional accessibility is further limited by the principle cited in the sources that a service area with a population density below 20 inhabitants per km² must have at least one brigade per 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants.
The ministerial regulation amendment itself does not immediately affect a provider, because the service is rendered under the conditions agreed in an administrative contract concluded pursuant to Section 17²(1) of the Health Services Organisation Act. The emergency medical services funding agreement stipulates, among other things, the list of funded brigades, readiness hours per unit of time, and remuneration, and the contract may be amended only taking into account the circumstances set out in Section 17²(3). Accordingly, a provider wishing to preserve the contract must accept the new numerical and staffing configuration, funded by the Health Fund under the contract concluded pursuant to Section 19(1). The changes will most likely be implemented through the public procurement under Section 17³, in which market participants with commercial interests will compete. The staffing and equipment requirements for brigades are established by a regulation of the Minister of Health and Labour (the current version entered into force on 23 December 2025), which specifies the competences of members and the division of labour within a three-member brigade. Where a three-member crew cannot be staffed, the Health Board may, under Section 3(8) of the regulation, grant a reasoned temporary permit of up to 20 days for responses with a reduced crew. In ordinary circumstances, a provider may likewise obtain such a reasoned permit where a reduced crew improves quality, accessibility, and efficiency, but this must be coordinated with the Health Fund. The possibility of a permit for responses with a reduced crew is of practical significance particularly with respect to two-member brigades, because the two-person configuration is legally permitted by the regulation only on the basis of a permit or of an applicable staffing requirement.
In practice, the changes are most significant for three parties: emergency care providers, who must render the service or receive payment under the new regulation; the Health Fund, which will negotiate the contractual terms; and the Health Board, which confirms the service areas. Since the ministry and the agencies have already initiated the changes and the discussion concerns bids under the procurement measure, the providers' possible litigation strategy lies in amending the contractual terms or raising objections within the scope of Section 17²(3) and the funding framework of Section 19. The Health Fund intends to allow amendments to the number, type, and location of brigades in the contracts, which is a contractual supervisory measure rather than an independent sanction. Since the impact of the new network will be assessed after six and twelve months, it is advisable for providers to negotiate amendments to the contract terms before then.
The awarding of a qualification by an educational institution acting as a qualification awarding body selected without a competition is not subject to the provisions of §§ 16, 17, 18 and 19 of the Vocational Qualifications Act, and such an educational institution does not form a qualification committee.
The costs of the professional qualification examination of a student studying at a training place formed from the operational support for vocational higher education are covered from the state budget (§ 17^2(1) of the Vocational Qualifications Act).
Legal responsibility for organizing the assessment of skills of vocational education institution graduates is currently divided between two parties: the educational institution and the vocational qualification awarding body, and the state's intention to end this dual assessment means that awarding the qualification upon completion of studies will be consolidated within the school's own decision-making power. The fact reported in the news — that employers fear losing an independent benchmark along with a separate professional qualification examination — directly concerns the regulation in § 22^1 of the Vocational Qualifications Act, which already distinguishes between two routes for awarding qualifications. Instead, the functions of the qualification committee are performed by a qualification committee formed by a qualification awarding body selected through a competition or, in its absence, by the qualification institution, to which representative organizations of educational institutions appoint their representative. Thus, the legal question is whose composition and whose instructions ensure the comparability of a qualification with the same title when assessment takes place upon completion of studies. The normative anchor is § 19 of the Vocational Qualifications Act, under which the qualification committee approves the procedures of the professional qualification examination to be taken upon completion of vocational higher education, the guidelines for organizing assessment, and the examination materials. To conduct the professional qualification examination taken upon completion of vocational higher education, the educational institution forms an assessment committee, selecting its members from a list agreed with the qualification committee.
The current system seeks to balance the interests of the school and labour-market parties through several mechanisms. The qualification committee coordinates the list of assessment committee members submitted by the educational institution and may itself appoint representatives of employers to the list in order to ensure the involvement of labour-market parties. The qualification awarding body organizes the development of competence assessment guidelines, examination materials and other documents necessary for awarding the qualification, and assesses the conformity of the curriculum of an educational institution selected without a competition with the occupational qualification standard. The diploma is a nationally recognized education document issued by the school to a person who has achieved the learning outcomes corresponding to the qualification or partial qualification described in the curriculum (§ 2 of the Regulation on the forms, statute and issuance procedure of graduation documents of vocational education institutions). The planned awarding of the first qualification together with the diploma would in practice mean that the graduation document and the decision certifying the qualification merge into a single procedure administered by the educational institution. The costs are divided into the costs of developing the examination and the work of the qualification committee, and the costs of conducting it, and where the school acts as a qualification awarding body selected without a competition, these are covered through a qualification awarding body selected by competition to the qualification committee and the educational institution, respectively. The Qualifications Council may not approve different fee amounts for the awarding of a qualification of the same structure and complexity within the same occupational field, which shows that the legislator has sought to ensure comparability also through uniform pricing. The large variation in schools' results mentioned in the news indicates that the assessment of curriculum conformity and the coordination of the composition of the assessment committee have not produced a uniform benchmark.
If the state ends dual assessment on the basis of the draft act, the practical changes for the graduate and the employer are as follows:
The obligations of the qualification awarding body — receiving documents, assessing eligibility, issuing the qualification certificate and disclosing information — remain within the remit of a competition-based qualification awarding body, but their relative significance decreases if, upon completion of studies, the exceptional route from the general rule becomes the only route. For employers this is significant because in many occupational fields the independent benchmark that they currently obtain through the qualification committee and a qualification awarding body selected by competition disappears. For schools, the coordination of the composition of the assessment committee with the qualification committee becomes crucial, as this is the remaining opportunity to involve labour-market representatives. The draft act continues its proceedings in the Riigikogu.
A vote of no confidence may be decided upon at the earliest on the second day after its initiation, unless the government demands a faster decision, and no confidence is expressed if a majority of the membership of the Riigikogu votes in favour (Constitution § 97).
A motion of no confidence on the same grounds may be re-initiated at the earliest three months after the previous no-confidence vote (Constitution § 97).
In this case, the majority of the membership of the Riigikogu decides whether the government remains in office — the motion of no confidence, supported by 34 votes, failed because at least 51 votes are required. What matters for the reader is that a failed vote of no confidence does not remove the government, but rather confirms it in office and sets a temporal limit on any new attempt. The legal question is under what conditions a vote of no confidence may be expressed in the Government of the Republic and what the consequences of its failure are. This is resolved under § 97 of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia and §§ 133–135 of the Riigikogu Rules of Procedure and Internal Rules Act. A vote of no confidence may be initiated by at least one-fifth of the membership of the Riigikogu by submitting a written request at a sitting, and no confidence is expressed if a majority of the membership of the Riigikogu votes in favour.
The procedure complied with the requirements of the Rules of Procedure Act: the debate began with a statement by the representative of the initiators of the no-confidence motion, followed by the government member concerned, to whom up to two oral questions could be addressed. After the conclusion of deliberations, the presiding officer put the question to a vote. Since 34 votes were cast in favour, the majority of the membership was not achieved and no confidence was not expressed. Had the motion of no confidence succeeded, it would have had specific consequences. If no confidence had been expressed in the Government or the Prime Minister, the President of the Republic could, within three days, at the proposal of the government, call extraordinary elections to the Riigikogu (Constitution § 97). The expression of no confidence would have been formalised as a resolution of the Riigikogu (Riigikogu Rules of Procedure and Internal Rules Act § 134(5)). If no confidence is expressed in an individual minister, the President of the Riigikogu notifies the President of the Republic, who dismisses the minister from office. The failure of the vote imposes no legal obligations on the government and does not trigger any process of government change.
In practical terms, this means that the government of Kristen Michal remains in office, and the opposition can make a new attempt at a no-confidence motion only after three months have elapsed from today's vote. The government may, however, itself link the adoption of a bill submitted to the Riigikogu to a question of confidence, and if the Riigikogu does not adopt the bill, the government resigns (Constitution § 98). A bill linked to a question of confidence cannot be withdrawn (Riigikogu Rules of Procedure and Internal Rules Act § 95). Reinsalu referred to the electoral decision to be taken in March 2027 — this is a political perspective, since upon the expiry of the regular term of the Riigikogu, bills not adopted lapse from the legislative process (Riigikogu Rules of Procedure and Internal Rules Act § 96).
Under the bill, the Minister of Culture would be able to appoint the majority of the council on his or her own initiative and without a public process.
For the Estonian National Museum's (ERM) staff and for the museum sector, the situation changes fundamentally: under the current regime, the ERM is a state agency administered by the Ministry of Culture and a state museum (Statutes of the Estonian National Museum, § 1), headed by a director with whom the Minister of Culture concludes an employment contract for a term of up to five years (Statutes, § 5(1)). The draft bill would entail a transition to the status of a public-law legal person as early as 1 April 2027, and the principal legal question for museum-sector organisations is who has the right, and under what procedure, to constitute the governance and representation structure of the new legal form. At the moment of transition, the current braking mechanism falls away — the advisory council provided for in the statutes, whose composition is confirmed by the minister but on the director's proposal (Statutes, § 5(4) and (5)). If the bill remains in its current wording, the Minister of Culture would be able to appoint the majority of the new council on his or her own initiative and without conducting a public process. Decisive here is the fact that the statutes of a state museum are established by the minister by regulation, and the requirements applicable to candidates for the position of head, as well as the procedure for the competition, are likewise established by the minister (Museums Act, § 17, § 18(1) and (2)) — meaning that the details of the governance model are, in substance, at the disposal of the minister in office. The filling of a vacant position of head of a state museum takes place by public competition, and the term of the contract is tied precisely to the minister's decision, not the council's (Museums Act, § 18). Accordingly, the risk highlighted by the museum association is formally technical-legal in nature: whoever constitutes the council also determines the conditions of the director's competition and, through that, the institution's course of action.
Under the law in force, the museums council is merely an advisory body to the minister responsible for the field, comprising representatives of museums and of founders as well as experts, and it makes proposals and issues opinions (Museums Act, § 19(1) and (2)). Consequently, § 19 confers no decision-making rights on museum-sector organisations in the governance of the ERM — their instrument of influence today is the submission of proposals and opinions, not a veto. State and administrative supervision over a museum that has joined the museums database is exercised by the National Heritage Board, verifying compliance with the procedure for supplementing and taking into custody museum collections (Museums Act, § 22(1) and (2)) — this supervision is substantive and remains separate from the ministerial power of appointment. The possession, use and disposal of the ERM's property currently takes place under the State Assets Act (Museums Act, § 4(2); Statutes, § 8(1)); in the case of a museum that is a public-law person, this would pass to the procedure established by the museum's founder (Museums Act, § 4(3)), which makes the content of the founding document legally decisive. On the financing side, the activities of a state museum are currently funded from the state budget for the fulfilment of the objectives set out in its statutes (Museums Act, § 20(1); Statutes, § 8(2)), and although an operating grant and targeted support may be allocated to a museum that is a public-law person (Museums Act, § 21(3) and (5)), the ministry has announced that no additional funds are planned — thus the change of status does not in itself bring any financial guarantee. The significance of the circumstance under observation: even after the transition, both the procedure for allocating grants and the requirements applicable to the director remain subject to ministerial regulation (Museums Act, § 21(4), § 18(2)), so that independence depends above all on the legislative wording of the appointment procedure.
The museums council will convene in the last week of October 2026 and will take up for deliberation the joint positions of three organisations — the Museum Association, the Estonian Museums Association and the Estonian National Committee of ICOM — and two alternative models for constituting the council (a seven-member and a five-member variant).