President Lennart Meri refused to proclaim the “Social Welfare Act Amendment Act”, passed on the Riigikogu on June 6, as the Act is contrary to the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia and the “Rural Municipality and City Budgets and State Budget Correlation Act”.

Clause 4 of Section 12 of the “Social Welfare Act Amendment Act” amended subsection 3 of Section 22 of the “Social Welfare Act”, which states that subsistence benefits shall be granted and paid by rural municipality governments and city governments in the amount, under the conditions and pursuant to the procedure established by law from funds allocated to the budget of the rural municipality government and city government from the state budget and state taxes. This imposes on the rural municipality and city governments the duty of the payment of subsistence benefits, which is the duty of the state according to subsection 2 of Section 28 of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia. The state shall guarantee the general social main right –support in the case of need. The subsistence benefit does not serve the purpose of distributing budget revenues between the population, but the purpose of distributing budget revenues to people suffering from need. According to Subsection 2 of Section 28 of the Constitution, guaranteeing a decent life to all the population of Estonia is the duty of the state, and not a local matter.

Subsection 3 of Section 22 of the Social Welfare Act as amended provides that subsistence benefit shall be paid from the state budget and funds received from state taxes. At the same time, the procedures for making the respective allocations intended for specific purposes to the local government budgets from the state budget have not been regulated and the sources of financing have not been defined clearly. The part of rural municipality or city budget received from state taxes cannot be seen as a payment for the performance of public tasks. This is the revenue of local governments that is necessary for performing their basic tasks. The established regulation does not provide the local governments with equal opportunities for supporting people in need, as their income basis first of all depends on the receipts of income tax of natural persons, which differs considerably for different local governments. This does not guarantee equal treatment of all people suffering from need. But Section 12 of the Estonian Constitution prohibits any kind of discrimination.


Press Service of the Office of the President
Kadriorg, June 26, 2001

back | archive of press releases | main page