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Estonia · Law · SE

668

The Crisis Situation and National Defense Act

avaldatud riigiteatajasEstonia· Riigikogu· ET

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2 June 2025

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AVALDATUD_RIIGITEATAJAS

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2 June 2026

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Summary

The draft created as a result of the revision of the crisis law, which consolidates the three current laws (the National Defense Act, the State of Emergency Act and the State of Emergency Act) into a whole. The draft simplifies the preparation and management of the special conditions mentioned in the constitution (state of emergency, state of emergency, state of war) and systematizes the measures applicable to solve them. Increases crisis preparedness across the broad spectrum of national defence. A whole is created a legal space with a uniform conceptual apparatus and a uniform resolution arrangement. The collective term "crisis situation" combining civil and national defense crises and the term "permanent crisis task" combining existing national defense tasks, tasks in an emergency and vital services will be put into use. Institutions with a permanent crisis task participate in a unified planning process, and as a new task they ensure their continuity, i.e. they think through the crisis roles of personnel, ensure the means-reserves necessary to resolve the crisis or mitigate the effects and deal with mitigating possible risks. The crisis task increases the clarity of the roles of the broad national defense actors in crises. Among other things, clearer expectations and tasks are set for crisis solvers: the government, authorities, local governments and vital service providers. In a crisis situation, local governments must first of all focus on ensuring vital services (water supply, sewerage, district heating, road maintenance), to the designation and deployment of evacuation sites in their territory, and to assisting in large-scale evacuation (including provision of food and drinking water) and to the provision of more important social and educational services. The existing special procedures "emergency" and "heightened defense readiness" will disappear, the latter will be replaced by the special procedure "crisis". It can be used when it is necessary to solve with high impact civil crisis or ensure national defense. During a crisis situation, the government must ensure the coordination of the activities of several institutions or individuals, measures limiting the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals can be implemented, and more abilities, means and supplies can be involved than usual. The resolution of the crisis situation is led by the Prime Minister. When preparing for crises, there is one process for preparing plans, each participant can prepare one plan for both the crisis situation and its threshold to smaller events or crises below. A new planning document is being prepared - the crisis plan of the Government of the Republic, which brings together the preparation and resolution of civil crises and national defense crises, which have been a separate process until now. The current plan of state defense activities is preserved in the consolidated document. Crisis tasks are also linked to positions and workplaces with crisis tasks, which are based on the currently valid State Defense and workplace regulation. Offices and workplaces with crisis tasks can be used in both civil and national defense crises. The resolution of financial crises is linked to the general crisis resolution system and the Government of the Republic is given the right to ensure the stability of the financial sector if the Unified Crisis Resolution Council has not taken measures in time. The work of internal security authorities in the detention, arrest of persons in a state of emergency and martial law, when formalizing permits for surveillance operations, etc., becomes significantly more flexible, e.g., instead of the usual 48 hours, the time to formalize an arrest warrant is 7 days in a state of emergency and martial law. Differences related to the organization of local government during a state of emergency and martial law are foreseen (e.g. differences related to convening and voting of the council and differences related to budgetary resources). Provision is made for preparing for crises as well as also the basis for obtaining the information necessary to solve them. The bill abolishes and/or eases requirements in several areas, e.g. eases requirements for social workers and care workers, provides for differences in applying for family benefits, etc. The circle of risk analysis preparers, exercise obligation and performance guarantors will be expanded. Also, the circle of companies that are assigned permanent crisis tasks is increasing. In current law the right to apply existing restrictive measures will be expanded minimally compared to the laws that will expire (National Defense Act, State of Emergency Act, State of Emergency Act).

Machine translation from Estonian. The official text remains authoritative.

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