OREANDA-NEWS. At today’s session, the Government decided to form a government committee in order to prepare and carry out the local administration reform.

The task of the committee is to submit proposals on the draft Act of the local administration reform and other necessary amendments to the Act to the Government of the Republic, after first reviewing the materials prepared by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance responsible for the field along with the assessments and proposals of the committee of experts formed by the Minister of Public Administration.

The formation of the committee aggregates and includes various parties in the development of the principles of the implementation of the administration reform and the application of the administration reform.

Pursuant to the coalition action plan, the political management of the administration reform is carried out by the Prime Minister, therefore, the chairman of the committee is the Prime Minister and the vice chairman is the Minister of Public Administration, who is substantively responsible for the implementation of the administration reform.

The following persons are appointed as committee members: the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Health and Employment, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Education and Research, the representatives of the Constitutional Committee of the Riigikogu and of the Rural Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu, the representative of the Office of the President of the Republic, the Adviser to the Prime Minister, as well as the representatives of local government associations – the representatives of the Association of Estonian Cities and of the Association of Municipalities of Estonia, and the representative of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In addition to the formation of the committee advising the Government of the Republic, an expert committee is established with the directive of the Minister of Public Administration and its tasks include the preparation of the administration reform and the development of the draft Act of the administration reform and other necessary amendments to the Act by involving specialists and professionals of the ministries, other governmental authorities and bodies, as well as field experts in the work of the working group.

The committee meets whenever necessary with a frequency of about once every two months in order to review the work that has been done so far in the expert committee and the corresponding ministries and to provide directions to the expert committee and the ministries for their further action.

The mentioned task and the formation of the committee arises from the coalition action plan, which states that the administration reform must be carried out by 2017. The administration reform is based on the assessment of compliance of the local governments on the principle of objective and unambiguous criteria. Pursuant to the coalition action plan, the local governments that do not meet the criteria must merge by the date provided for in the Act and in case the merger is not carried out in one year after the assessment, the Government of the Republic will enforce the merger.

The proposed administration reform Act and other laws necessary to carry out the reform enter into force on 1 July 2016.