The rule of law

Participants believed that the highly digitalised Estonian judicial system was working well and that the length of proceedings and pending cases was amongst the shortest in the EU. This had proven useful during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the courts had continued their work without interruption thanks to such a high level of digitalisation. Participants considered that there was equal access to the courts for all, although the sole litigation language was Estonian, which might deter members of minorities such as the Russian-speaking minority. People living in Estonia that did not speak the language could however request an interpreter from the court. An issue noted by the participants was the low fees available under state legal aid. They explained that court-appointed attorneys under the state aid legal system could not financially sustain their work and were therefore leaving the system. A participant noted that there was a shortage of judges, which was likely to be a long-term issue given the lack of vocations and reduced enrolment in training to become a judge. As a result, judges were faced with an increasingly high workload. They also did not benefit from the same social guarantees as other categories of professions, as their salaries did not include a pension provision. This in turn impacted the attractiveness of the profession. There was concern among the participants that the new directive to make national competition authorities more effective enforcers (the ECN+ Directive) would endanger client confidentiality. They believed that the lack of rules clarifying when a law firm could be searched also threatened client confidentiality. Participants agreed that Estonia did not have a general issue with police violence. Participants felt that in recent years Estonia had witnessed an increase in corruption cases, particularly in the private sector, as a result of better detection of these cases