Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:16:42"In the case of energy-intensive companies, energy price is also very
00:16:45important, explain to me
00:16:48what you understand by economic development
00:16:52or or or even the priority development of a focus
00:16:56area. Exactly, I think you very well highlighted
00:16:59those same points, that financial support may not even mean anything if
00:17:03one company receives for example 200,000 euros.
00:17:07support, but regulation does not allow it to operate. Let's give a very
00:17:11specific example that we have tried for a long time to change in Estonia,
00:17:14which is the Medicines Act, because Estonia could be the first country in the world that can
00:17:18offer so-called mobile pharmacies, i.e.
00:17:21self-service pharmacies, where you can get your prescription medicine 24/7
00:17:25with an ID card. Today's legislation does not allow
00:17:29this. We have a number of countries in the world, including Canada, who have said that if
00:17:32Estonia can bring this success story
00:17:36company here, then they would immediately want
00:17:39to start using such a service. So, no matter how much we direct
00:17:43money into this field of medicine
00:17:46cabinets, self-service pharmacies, if today's regulation does not allow it, then they cannot be
00:17:49successful. That's why regulation is truly important. Similarly, the
00:17:52tax system. In Estonia today, companies still have 0%
00:17:56income tax if you reinvest your profits. This
00:17:59has been a very important part of why so much entrepreneurship has come to Estonia, why we have
00:18:02e-residency today, which brings us directly and indirectly a lot of
00:18:06tax money, so... "It's truly not only financial support that we can give to companies.
00:18:10Let's take the example of France again, why today they have managed
00:18:13to attract many companies' headquarters and research and development centers
00:18:16from other European countries. This is due to a charismatic
00:18:19president named Macron, who organizes
00:18:22a large event once a year in Versailles, pats companies on the back,
00:18:26looks them deep in the eyes and says, 'Come here, we will give you everything you
00:18:30want.' So truly, supporting companies is not only
00:18:33financial, it involves so many other things, like this example of medicine and
00:18:36self-service pharmacies." We are currently working in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, we have a program called
00:18:40Accelerate Estonia, which looks at what are the new
00:18:43business models that face regulatory obstacles,
00:18:46and then we push for such
00:18:50business models to be able to operate, so that we can change the so-called Medicines Act
00:18:53so that this company can enter the Estonian market. Okay, I'll try to introduce
00:18:57a bit of intrigue and and another
00:19:00field, I'll bring a specific field
00:19:03that has caused a lot of ideological debates recently.
00:19:06debates, for example, should the green economy be a
00:19:09focus area in Estonian economic development
00:19:13in the future or not, considering
00:19:17the political changes that
00:19:20have already accompanied, for example, the European Parliament elections, which
00:19:24we saw in the USA accompanied the presidential elections, and we don't
00:19:27know what the result of the Estonian March elections will be in
00:19:302027. For example, can the green economy
00:19:34be and must be a focus area? Or not,
00:19:38or or or what kind of decision regarding the green economy
00:19:41might emerge during the analysis? Hmm, I
00:19:45think with the last sentence you answered the question, it will become clear during the analysis, but intuitively
00:19:49I would say that the green economy as a word or a field is too
00:19:52broad to be a single focus area. It's similar to
00:19:55digital solutions in every field. The green economy is also already
00:19:59a goal, not a sector. Here we can talk about clean electricity,
00:20:02industrial efficiency, biochemistry, right,
00:20:05electrification more broadly.
00:20:08"The fact is that our planet is overheating. No
00:20:12president who decides to leave the Paris Climate Agreement multiple times, right,
00:20:15will change that. We have to deal with
00:20:19these issues, but we also have to deal with
00:20:22industrial efficiency, not only for the sake of the economy,
00:20:26but because then our prices are more favorable, we consume less
00:20:28electricity. So the green economy as such, I wouldn't say it's a focus area, because it's
00:20:32as broad as today's focus areas.
00:20:36The green economy, in addition to subsidies, often relies on
00:20:39state regulations. On the one hand, we see that
00:20:43setting a high regulatory price for CO2, on the one hand,
00:20:47strangles oil shale energy and...
00:20:50and regulation has given an advantage to wind, solar and
00:20:53battery investments. Or I can also give another example, as we discussed
00:20:57this on Monday's Uudis Plus show. At public
00:21:00events, the use of disposable dishes is legally
00:21:03prohibited, and this has led to the emergence of
00:21:06companies offering cup and plate recycling. But
00:21:10we see these recycling companies struggling at a loss
00:21:14and and and they find that, well, the current regulation is too
00:21:18little and and maybe.
00:21:20then it would offer them more market if the state would, for example, also
00:21:24ban disposable dishes in restaurants, cinemas,
00:21:27nightclubs, also for food
00:21:29takeaways, courier services, a
00:21:33requirement to offer reusable dishes would arise, and
00:21:36I'm not asking this for no reason, the Ministry of Climate is currently also
00:21:39for consultation or discussion ee such
00:21:42an idea or a draft has been sent
00:21:45out. What is your position from the Ministry of Economic Affairs
00:21:49as a deputy chancellor, should? should
00:21:53green economy companies, a specific example, then the goal of
00:21:56reducing plastic should provide regulatory
00:21:59support by banning even more disposable
00:22:02plastic dishes or not? Since you asked for my personal
00:22:05opinion, then in the Ministry of Economic Affairs
00:22:08we are still formulating a position on packaging or the Packaging Act, but I personally think
00:22:12that with regulation we should not artificially support any
00:22:15company. Regulation should be empowering. We can remove regulation
00:22:19so that... a company does better, and similarly, actually, this whole
00:22:23Packaging Act and and and cup use and reusability, this is based on
00:22:26a European Union directive, if I'm not mistaken, which
00:22:30talks about reusable dishes,
00:22:32and I don't believe that in Estonia we should go further than European Union
00:22:36legislation. This has always been a criticism from businesses towards
00:22:39Estonia, please let's not do it faster, let's not go further than the basic European
00:22:43Union demand. Therefore,
00:22:47to help one company, we definitely should not make
00:22:50tradition stricter for others. I will give you a personal example, well, actually I'm
00:22:54not talking about one company, I'm talking about a sector, there are several sectors,
00:22:57but even within the sector, there are definitely other solutions than that
00:23:01legislation must ban others so that we can operate, right? I
00:23:05visited Haapsalu Taste Street a couple of weeks ago, and there,
00:23:08a coffee cup seemed very cheap, 2.50, then it turned out that for the deposit
00:23:12you had to pay two more euros, one person in front of me went to buy
00:23:16that coffee, looked at 2.50, then was told, 'Ah, two euros will be added, from which you can get
00:23:20back only one euro,' and eventually the person said, 'I'm not buying that
00:23:22coffee cup.' So this is also entrepreneurship, that someone sells that coffee, and
00:23:26eventually if then the packaging business becomes a limitation
00:23:29for them in terms of sales, then we are actually hindering another type of business.
00:23:33Of course, I acknowledge this or it's a fact that our planet is overheating,
00:23:37we must deal with the green economy, as I said, but we don't have to promote
00:23:40one sector through increasingly restrictive regulations. I will now broaden
00:23:44the topic again. How large is the financial volume that
00:23:48currently annually goes from Estonian and European Union
00:23:51taxpayers' funds to Estonian
00:23:54entrepreneurship as support, whether
00:23:57as support for research and development activities or
00:23:59from other lines? Hmm.
00:24:02Well, I can talk about the numbers from the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Our
00:24:06main partner in supporting businesses is the Enterprise and Innovation
00:24:09Foundation (Eis). This
00:24:12year, their budget is about 236
00:24:16million euros, of which approximately 80, about
00:24:1982 million euros, are state budget
00:24:21funds, and then 150 million euros plus are
00:24:25external supports. There is the Just Transition Fund, the European
00:24:28Recovery Plan funding, Norwegian
00:24:31grants,
00:24:33structural funds, and in addition, research and development
00:24:37money, which is 1% of Estonia's GDP, which is
00:24:41an inter-party principled agreement that every
00:24:44year 1% of GDP will be directed to
00:24:47research and development, so in short, this sum
00:24:51is several hundred million euros, but it is not only
00:24:54direct support, it is divided into many different
00:24:57support schemes, whether we are talking about guarantees,
00:25:01loans, we have now created a new innovation loan specifically for such
00:25:04companies that might not get a loan directly from a bank, because their product is
00:25:07still under development, but it could be a higher potential, higher productivity
00:25:11field or company,
00:25:14so let's say that we are not paying out the then
00:25:18236 million euros equally to
00:25:21companies as money in hand. As of today, the
00:25:24focus has shifted and the resources have been
00:25:28used for ineffective activities. This was a quote
00:25:32from the 2026 economic
00:25:35growth plan compiled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, which then justified the reform
00:25:38of the EISA structure and service portfolio.
00:25:42How do you evaluate the changes that have been made in EISA or
00:25:45EIS, as the official name is, under the leadership of Ursel Velve?
00:25:49Hmm, thank you. First of all, I think
00:25:52it's a bit too early to say, because this first year has actually been spent on
00:25:55making EIS itself more efficient. There have been many
00:25:58team reorganizations, a very large number of people
00:26:02have been made redundant. And
00:26:06certainly we also have some so-called backlog
00:26:09budget challenges in the sense that we still have
00:26:12European Union funding that we need to distribute until
00:26:16the end of this period, so it's a bit early to evaluate, but
00:26:20I'm already very happy that we are narrowing down the services and
00:26:24products that we offer at EIS, because precisely thanks to the Just Transition Fund, the Recovery Plan
00:26:27funding, there were various crises in Europe, the European Union directed more and
00:26:31more money, so we opened more and more new
00:26:34supports. We saw that interest in them might not be so
00:26:38great, and that's why the criticism was justified to some extent, that in some cases
00:26:41distributing the money might have been more expensive than the money that was distributed.
00:26:45So I'm waiting, I think that in the near future we will definitely see the result, today
00:26:48I cannot tell you a number for that, but we are moving in the right direction. If the state now
00:26:52defines these focus areas, then how large a
00:26:55part of the current support volume
00:26:58should go elsewhere, that currently goes to
00:27:05companies a, b, and c, and in the future should go to e and and
00:27:09so on, so how big a change should the definition of these
00:27:12focus areas bring in financial terms? In financial
00:27:15terms, I think the total amount will remain
00:27:19the same, right? We have the research and development agreement of 1%, we have a new European
00:27:22Union within that sum, I cannot tell you today, because it does not
00:27:26mean that we will stop supporting all companies. Are we
00:27:29making, yes, are we making a micro-change right now, discussing
00:27:32for several years and the result is that a few million will be redirected, or are we talking about
00:27:36tens or or a hundred and more millions being redirected? I will come
00:27:39back to what we talked about at the beginning, that supporting companies,
00:27:42even in the case of focus areas, is not only financial, it is not only the direct support
00:27:46that we give them, it is our entire regulatory environment,
00:27:49for example. So whether I tell you today that it is
00:27:5250% of that, I would be lying to you anyway, because
00:27:56there is no correct answer yet, but I will say that we are already doing this stronger focusing today, if we
00:28:00look at the applied research program, which supports research-intensive companies in launching new
00:28:04products and services, we already did this focusing when the
00:28:07defense industry came, we created a new defense industry fund and
00:28:10directed a part of the existing applied research program
00:28:14funds already to the defense industry.
00:28:16So I honestly cannot tell you that percentage and number today. One claim that
00:28:20circulates among entrepreneurs and that I, as a journalist, have also been told, is that
00:28:24companies that have received support from AIC, their
00:28:27productivity is lower than the Estonian average. Is this claim
00:28:30true? I think it is true in that sense, entrepreneurs
00:28:34come to ask for support when they need it, and a very large part
00:28:37of EIS support is precisely to make companies more efficient,
00:28:40to increase productivity, so I believe that in that sense it is true,
00:28:44but it is not the case that a company receives support from EIS and then becomes less
00:28:48productive, that is definitely a false claim. But should it be the case in the future
00:28:51that if we look at a company that has received EIS support, that for example after five
00:28:55years, it is more productive compared to companies that have not received
00:28:59support? That is also the case today, generally speaking, that
00:29:02I cannot say that Estonia's largest exporting companies, the largest
00:29:05technology companies, we talked about Wise and
00:29:08Skype before, they don't come to ask for support either, maybe the support they
00:29:12need is export, it is diplomatic support, so in that sense we cannot really
00:29:16say directly that these companies that came through EIS, they are
00:29:19more productive than those who did not come, because others will still come to ask for it, those who
00:29:23need it, but I can tell you that if a company comes to ask for support for
00:29:27productivity, for example, then if after five years it is
00:29:30more productive than it was before, here... Bigbank economist Raul
00:29:33Leamets published an opinion piece in Postimees last week, where he also found
00:29:37that the state should not support company innovation
00:29:40with taxpayer money at all, that should be the task
00:29:44of the companies themselves, and Leamets also found that Estonia's very high
00:29:48contribution of taxpayer money to research and development
00:29:51costs has not led to higher economic growth in Estonia
00:29:54compared to neighboring countries that have invested
00:29:58less. How do you respond to such argumentation?
00:30:01Yes. "In an ideal world, the state really shouldn't support entrepreneurs,
00:30:05entrepreneurs can manage themselves, but then the state shouldn't restrict them either, for example through
00:30:08regulations. Simply today, the current economic situation in the world
00:30:12is such that we have state aid, right? It's a race
00:30:15to win, so Europeans have accused Americans of supporting their
00:30:18companies too much, but actually, in terms of total volume, the European
00:30:22Union and the USA support their companies to the same extent, it's just that in the European Union
00:30:26that support is 40% from Germany and Italy, between the two countries, if
00:30:30Germany supports its companies, Italy supports..." France supports, small countries are
00:30:34already in a worse situation, if Estonia, Latvia,
00:30:37Lithuania also don't support their companies, then they will be in an even worse situation, so inevitably we
00:30:41have to support, but I'm not saying it's direct support, we give money, we create new
00:30:45instruments, it's an innovation loan, uh, we support banks to
00:30:49amplify the provision of guarantees to banks for entrepreneurs,
00:30:52perhaps to those they wouldn't otherwise give them to. Uh, I can't
00:30:56agree at all that if we didn't have that 1% GDP agreement or
00:30:59didn't develop research...