The Political Parties Financing Surveillance Committee (ERJK) finds that the Liberal Citizen Foundation (SALK) donated services worth a total of 92,572 euros to four parties before the 2023 parliamentary elections. Committee chair Liisa Oviir said that the foundation purchased and conducted surveys, analyzed their results, and made them available to the four parties. According to Oviir, the parties were provided services without charge, while their competitors were not offered the same services. "And this quite clearly corresponds to what is prohibited under the Political Parties Act," Oviir added.
Timo Suslov, Secretary-General of the Reform Party, emphasized that the Reform Party did not order any services from SALK. "We did not invite them to our office to ask them to provide us with survey services. If there is no order, there can be no service," Suslov said. Anneli Ott, Secretary-General of the Center Party, shares his opinion. Ott asked whether a person who comes to talk about their work without being asked can later demand payment for that work from the one who listened to them.
Priit Lomp, Secretary-General of the Social Democratic Party, suggested looking to the future. "So that at some point we are not in a situation in Estonia where, three days before the elections, an information package from some organization conducting surveys drops into someone's mailbox, and then it is later claimed that this influenced the result," Lomp said.
ERJK chair Liisa Oviir emphasized that the foundation's work was not limited to a single information package or office meeting. The committee's work was spurred by an article published in Eesti Ekspress a few months after the elections, in which politicians themselves gave detailed explanations. "SALK provided all the data we needed," said Daniel Kõiv, who led Eesti 200's Tartu campaign for Ekspress, and explained how he repeatedly requested new models from SALK. According to Kõiv, he visited the foundation's database several times a week.
The parties believe that the apples offered by the foundation were already in their possession. "We certainly do not believe that we received any information that significantly or at all allowed us to change our campaign strategy," said Anneli Ott. Priit Lomp asked, if SALK's work had any influence, how is it possible that one party in contact with the foundation received 14 parliamentary mandates, another 39 mandates, and a third nine mandates. "In my estimation, this did not affect the party's result in a broader sense," Lomp said.
ERJK created its own formula. For ERJK, the exact impact of SALK's work was not of great importance, because an apple is an apple even if eating it leaves the stomach empty. However, it was important for the committee to calculate in monetary terms how the apples distributed to the parties should be valued. The foundation informed the committee that it spent 97,010 euros on the surveys shared with the parties. To this, the committee added labor costs and found that the foundation's service cost a total of 115,715 euros. Since SALK confirmed that knowledge was not shared only with the parties, the committee estimated that SALK spent four-fifths of the funds on the parties, or 92,572 euros.
The parties are still considering challenging the decision. All parties have 30 days to appeal the committee's decision in administrative court. None of the politicians who spoke to the public broadcaster confirmed going to court. However, all said they are considering this possibility. "The party has indeed reserved this claim in its budget, but how we proceed also requires some negotiation with other parties to see how they view it," Ott said.