The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs plans to replace the current four county courts, two administrative courts, and two circuit courts with three nationwide courts, with the draft bill largely complete.

The minister believes citizens will benefit most from the creation of the three nationwide courts.

"The Estonian legal system is for the people of Estonia, meaning that the people and companies who need to defend their rights in court will benefit most from the reform. The issue we are addressing for people is that, despite the fact that budgets have been increased all the time and the number of judges has grown, and despite the fact that the number of court cases has fallen, the length of proceedings has still increased," said Pakosta.

The long-planned judicial reform has received a lot of criticism from within the legal system and from the public.

The Judges' Association supports the first part of the reform, which concerns the separation of the administration of the first and second courts from the Ministry of Justice, and has already been implemented.

But it considers the additional parts of the reform, such as the merger of courts, which was an initiative of the minister, unnecessary.

"First of all, it is not clear what problem is intended to be solved by merging the first and second instance courts," said Anu Uritam, chairman of the Estonian Judges' Association.

"Over time, the minister has spoken about various possible problems. One of the things being referred to today is the decrease in the efficiency of the courts and the extension of procedural deadlines. First of all, the extension of procedural deadlines has occurred to a fairly small extent and the decrease in efficiency is not very large. But even more important is that we do not have a single court in Estonia today that is underloaded, meaning that in a certain connected system, such a merger would not have any real effect," she explained.

The association also says it is regrettable that the minister has decided to proceed with this plan, despite the fact that there is no support for it in the courts.

"Merging the courts is likely not in accordance with the constitution and poses many risks to both the rule of law and democracy," Uritam said.

The merger of courts will have no impact on the specialization of judges, she added: "Courts are already specialized today, judges all over Estonia are specialized, it already works today. Increasing specialization is completely possible without any merger of courts, these matters have no connection."

The reform is planned to enter into force no later than the summer of next year.

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