No. 19

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State policy for financing civic associations in Estonia

  • Marion Bobkov

    Chief Specialist, Local Government and Regional Administration Department, Ministry of the Interior

  • Mari Mandel-Madise

    Consultant, BDA Consulting

By decision at the cabinet meeting, the Government of the Republic has approved the strategy, introduced by the Minister for Regional Affairs, for reorganizing the financing of civic associations from the state budget, the goal of which is to create a comprehensive system for state financing of civic associations.

The central problem that needs to be resolved in the strategy is that ministries have not linked the financing of civic associations with national priorities and the functions of ministries. There is a missing link between the purpose of use of funds and the ministries’ functions. Nor do the ministries engage in joint financing of fields; instead there tends to be redundancy, which points to the fact that the state has thus far lacked a common understanding and overview of the target groups and fields on the civic association landscape that require financing. To make financing more effective, principles are being developed for assessing performance of funding civic associations from the state budget, improving collection and processing of information on funding of associations. Development activities that allow greater uniformity of financing practices will also be implemented in ministries, agencies in the ministries’ area of government, and local governments.

Full article in Estonian

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