Roadmaps and coalition agreements are not legally binding and if they become a back door for circumventing the policymaking process in a state governed by the rule of law, the result is undemocratic and amounts to poor governance, Külli Taro finds.
While Estonia has so far emulated the European Union in adopting green papers and white papers also in domestic policymaking, now, the era of roadmaps appears to have arrived. The Climate Act bill currently before the Riigikogu calls for the drafting of roadmaps to achieve climate goals. Last week, the government approved, in the form of a protocol decision, the “Framework for the Development of Estonia’s Unmanned Vehicle Sector and Roadmap 2026–2030.”
Of course, roadmaps have been drawn up before to plan the activities of institutions and entire sectors. But to my knowledge, the unmanned vehicles, or drones, document is the first roadmap approved by the government. The legal significance of such a protocol decision is, moreover, rather unclear.
In international practice, a roadmap is a step-by-step action plan designed to achieve a long-term goal, often involving multiple stakeholders. It is a voluntary strategic document that helps clarify, publicize and coordinate activities, but it is not legally binding and grants no one any rights or obligations. At the same time, government agencies are expected to take roadmaps into account when planning their activities and budgets.
Roadmaps may be politically and administratively important, but their significance across successive governments is not necessarily recognized. No one can be held accountable for failing to implement them. Calling a document a roadmap does not make it more special than an action plan, more binding than a white paper or different from an ordinary political agreement.
The most important political agreement, yet a document with almost no legal value, is still the coalition agreement. By its very nature, it is a good-faith agreement between private parties that can only be binding on its signatories. In the past, coalition agreements were signed by party leaders. In that case, they could be considered agreements between political parties as nonprofit associations. More recently, it has become customary for all MPs representing the coalition parties to sign the agreement. They can do so only as private individuals. Neither the Riigikogu nor the Government of the Republic, as institutions, can be bound by a coalition agreement.
No legal act provides for the conclusion of a coalition agreement. It may, but does not have to, include parties’ campaign promises. When a prime minister-designate presents the Riigikogu with the basis for forming a government, they may, but do not have to, have the outlines of a coalition agreement in their pocket. Yet it is precisely the coalition agreement that determines a large share of which laws are drafted, which reforms are launched and which issues make it onto the political agenda.
A coalition agreement acquires practical significance only through the Government of the Republic’s action program, which the government approves by order. While the drafting of other legal acts or strategies is subject to rules governing initiation, transparency, impact analysis, constitutional review and stakeholder involvement, measures included in the coalition agreement and then carried over into the action program often appear for unknown reasons and from unknown sources, without any substantive assessment of their feasibility, constitutionality or actual effects. All kinds of things can be written into a coalition agreement, but that does not mean the plan is sound or that the world actually works that way.
It is entirely understandable and necessary for coalition partners to agree on actions in order to form a government or for different parties to draw up a roadmap to achieve shared goals. The problems begin when it is assumed that decisions must be adopted simply because they are already written into a coalition agreement or some roadmap. If a coalition agreement or roadmap becomes a back door for circumventing the policymaking process agreed upon in a state governed by the rule of law, then the result is undemocratic and amounts to poor governance.
As a result of coalition agreement provisions being given an uncritical fast track within government institutions, the Riigikogu is debating several bills this very week whose legislative process has been anything but smooth because agreements with key stakeholders are lacking or because the impact analysis has not been sufficiently impartial and thorough.
Society, and especially civil servants whose duty it is to prepare draft legislation, must remain demanding and vigilant even when the main justification for a decision is merely the label of the government’s action program. And politicians should not take offense if a more thorough analysis reveals that some points in a coalition agreement cannot be implemented as planned.
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