Over 98,000 people sign VAT food price reduction petition by deadline
A record 98,580 people have digitally signed a citizens' initiative which calls on the Riigikogu to cut VAT on food products to 10 percent, from its current 24 percent. The petition closed for signatures at midnight Monday.
Estonia's VAT rose by two percentage points to 24 percent effective from July 1 this year, one of the highest rates EU-wide. There is no exemption on food.
In response, Food blogger and winner of MasterChef Eesti season one Jana Guzanova initiated the petition at the end of June, via the rahvaalgatus.ee platform.
It soon became the most-signed citizens' initiative petition ever, outstripping even a petition against the car tax imposed by the government at the start of this year. That petition received 65,565 signatures, a figure that the VAT initiative passed in late July.
Guzanova said it aims to send the Riigikogu the message that a tax burden of this size heightens inequality and puts great stress on consumers' food budgets.
Riigikogu discussion
The threshold number of signatures a petition must garner before it can be passed to the Riigikogu for debate is 1,000. This means Guzanova's petition gathered nearly 100 times that figure by the time it closed for signatures at midnight on August 11.
The total of 98,580 signatures is also slightly higher than the number of votes the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) received at the March 2023 Riigikogu elections. EKRE polled at 97,966 votes, itself the second-best result by party.
The Center Party and EKRE, along with the Social Democrats (SDE have all called for a cut in the VAT rate on food.
Minister of Finance Jürgen Ligi (Reform) is against a rate cut. He said that retailers would simply pocket the difference rather than reduce food prices in line with a VAT cut.
Eesti 200 chair and education minister Kristina Kallas also said VAT on food cannot be reduced, for the reason that the state does not have the budget to do so.
A recent survey commissioned by conservative think-tank the Institute for Societal Studies and conducted by pollsters Norstat found that 84 percent of respondents support lowering the VAT rate on food.
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Editor: Urmet Kook, Andrew Whyte, Helen Wright
