The Council for Efficiency and Economic Growth has been established to provide the prime minister with concrete proposals for deregulation, reducing administrative burdens and advancing measures to support economic growth. The council is composed of entrepreneurs from a range of sectors. Its core objectives are to identify regulations and reporting obligations that entrepreneurs consider excessive, to lower compliance costs, and to propose improvements to administrative processes that could facilitate growth. While decisions on how to use the resulting workload reductions and cost savings rest with the public sector, the council does not deal with staffing cuts or institutional downsizing.
The council will operate from March 2025 to September 2026, holding monthly meetings and convening thematic working groups as needed. Instead of producing a comprehensive report, proposals are discussed promptly in the government’s economic cabinet meetings and published every six months. All proposals are publicly available (see references). As of mid-June 2025, 548 unique proposals have been submitted, including 21 addressed to the Minister of Social Affairs. These cover a wide range of topics, for example discontinuing the development of the Alcohol Consumption Reduction Strategy 2025–2035 that is a follow-up strategy to the Alcohol Policy Green Paper (see the policy analysis “Estonian alcohol policy evaluation and policy considerations” https://eurohealthobservatory.who.int/monitors/health-systems-monitor/analyses/hspm/hspm-estonia-2023/estonian-alcohol-policy-evaluation-and-policy-considerations) or exempting temporary employees (“summer workers”) in food service establishments from the health certificate requirement. The council is supported by the Government Office and relevant ministries.