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 | Speeches | | |
The President of the Republic on the Forum of Local Governments on November 22, 2001, in Tartu22.11.2001
Dear Ministers,
dear participants of the Local Governments Forum!
Welcome to everybody gathered here to Tartu today to discuss the current status and development trends of our local governments!
In the organisation of the life of the society, local governments have a central role both in ensuring democracy and at the turbulent times for the society, as local government is the source and the immediate basis of the actual power of the people. Also in the history of the Republic of Estonia, local governments have an important role and significance.
The people of Estonia won their independent statehood in 1918 due to the established local government traditions. Also the restoration of Estonia's independent statehood and the creation of the administrative bodies of an independent country was started from local governments in 1989; with their support and mediation, extensive reforms and changes were carried out during the period after the restoration of Estonia's independence.
At the same time, the development of local governments as the primary and central tool for the organisation of the life of the society has proved to be a much longer and more complicated process. The administrative reform that begun with great hopes in 1989 has been accompanied by ramifications of thoughts and aspirations, so that the course of the reform has been unsystematic and infirm, conceptually undetermined and organisationally and legally not guaranteed; inevitably, this has delayed the development of local governments.
The balance and strength of society as an integrated system depends on the strength of its constituents. Thus, the strengthening of statehood and the guaranteeing of its administrative capability is necessarily dependent on the creation of conditions for the fast development of local governments, which will ensure the satisfaction of the citizens' life's necessities in a dynamically developing society.
The Europe of the future has been defined also as the Europe of regions and local governments, where the role of local governments in deciding and solving local matters would grow considerably, and where the relations between the state and the local governments would be based on the values recorded in the Charter of the Local Governments of Europe.
On our way to the European Union, the aim of the reform of the local governments is the creation of a system of local governments that would meet the needs of the changed conditions in the society and ensure the development of the society with its activities. At the same time, the local governments organisation of Estonia must retain its national character and also absorb, with critical evaluation, the experience of European countries in developing their local governments.
We have good neighbours and friends, who will be glad to share their experience in developing local governments. Also my state visit to the Republic of Finland, which ended yesterday, confirmed this. It is important for us to be able to evaluate the experience of other countries as a whole, to select from it the rational and favourable for development, and to be able to suit this to the integrated and modernised model of our system of local governments.
To this forum, which has many topics and problems to discuss, I would also like to present some starting points for planning the further development of local governments.
First, the reform of local governments must be based on theoretically well-structured foundation. The solutions presented in the plans for local government reform have different level of elaboration and finish, and have not been united into an integrated system. And yet the house that must fulfil several functions and house different generations cannot be built without a design plan that has been thoroughly considered and discussed with all the inhabitants of the house. Also local government, together with a lifestyle carrying the local character and the local initiative, is the immediate human environment of the people living on a given territory. If it is torn down violently and replaced with a lifeless construction that has no face of its own, the builder may be satisfied, but not the inhabitants.
In my opinion, the content of the local government reform means the balanced public relations between the state and the local governments. The local government is the link uniting the state to the civic society, it is the primary foundation of the democratic society, and the source of the actual power of the people. The administrative reform must develop towards the goal of transferring several state administrative functions to local governments, guaranteeing adequate resources for the fulfilment of these functions, and ensuring and modernising the legal status of the local governments in changed public relations. The relations between the state and the local governments must develop into relations of partnership and co-operation, where state surveillance over local governments is the legal guarantee of public interests. The opposition and trials of strength between the state and the local governments must become part of history just as the legendary squabbles at Vargamäe in our classical literature; this tradition should be brought along into the present day.
The method for the reform of local government should consist of openness and co-operation. I mean co-operation between the local government units themselves, between unions of local governments, between the state and local governments. Different political forces and unions, scientists and specialists of different fields, and above all, the inhabitants of towns and rural municipalities, should be engaged into the discussion of subjects related to the reform of local governments and into the evaluation of solutions. Understanding the system of local governments as the basis of the stable development of the society, a long-term social contract must be achieved for the changing of this system; and this contract should never be used as a tool in political competition. I have promised, already this year, to initiate the Roundtable of local governments and regional development by the President of the Republic, where we would like to involve the representatives of local governments from all counties, and the respective experts, so that we could jointly evaluate and develop positions on designing the local government administrative system and ensuring the development of different regions in Estonia; and with this form of co-operation, to create a permanent link between the state and the local governments.
The goal of the local government reform are the people living in Estonia, who have the right to safe human environment, where they would be able to realise their constitutional rights and fulfil the respective obligations. The human focus of the local government reform is one way to restore the trusting relations between the state and the citizens. Only when relying on the trust of the people, the future choices of the state can be realised into political decisions on the level of state power. Only those trusted by the people get the people's mandate to make the decisions concerning their fate and their future.
I wish strength and success to everybody attending this forum, in the hope and faith that today's discussions will be followed by real actions and changes in our local governments.
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