Enterprise Estonia’s foreign representatives should be part of embassies

The Chamber of Commerce has made a proposal to the Foreign Committee of the Parliament to add a principle to the foreign policy development plan, according to which the foreign representations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the foreign representatives of Enterprise Estonia must be brought together under one ministry.

At the moment it is unclear why it is necessary to keep the network of economic diplomats under the area of governance of two different ministries. If the management, funding, goal-setting and realization of activities of the foreign representatives takes place in different ministries, it does not promote the development of the network of economic diplomats and working in the name of a common goal. Such artificial separation of the network of foreign representatives brings along only higher cost of coordination.

In order to solve the problem, we proposed bringing the position of the Minister of Foreign Trade from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with the position of the Minister, other positions and activities related to the activities of the Minister of Foreign Trade should be transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs together with the respective funding.

The change also means that the foreign representatives of Enterprise Estonia would go, with their current funding, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Estonia would have a commonly managed and purposeful network of foreign representatives. As a result of the change, there would probably be a need to review and update the tasks of economic diplomats.

It would be more useful and understandable for entrepreneurs if the entire network of foreign representatives would be under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For example, if today, an entrepreneur requests assistance from a foreign representation, they must decide if they should contact an Estonian embassy or a foreign representative of Enterprise Estonia. At times, the foreign representations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the foreign representatives of Enterprise Estonia offer similar services to entrepreneurs, but there are also significant differences. For example, if an Estonian company needs the state’s assistance on more distant markets to, e.g. ‘open doors’, such support can be provided only by diplomats sent from Estonia, but not foreign representatives of Enterprise Estonia. If the foreign representatives of Enterprise Estonia would be under the foreign representations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there would be no such problem and the situation would be much clearer for everyone.