Center Party and Isamaa meet for Tallinn coalition talks

The Center Party and Isamaa started their formal Tallinn coalition negotiations Thursday.
The two parties had earlier agreed in principle to form a ruling coalition in the capital, following last month's local elections, which saw Center win 37 seats, three short of a majority on the 79-seat Tallinn City Council.
The first round of talks are currently taking place at the Särgava guesthouse in Pirita, and will begin with an overview of the city's financial situation, Isamaa spokesperson Viljar Voog said.
As per the initial plan, the two parties will be able to provide their first substantive comments on what has been agreed upon in the talks by Friday afternoon.
Earlier in the week, Riina Solman, head of Isamaa's Tallinn branch, stated that the order of topics in coalition talks remains unclear, though both parties have confirmed that public transport in Tallinn should remain free of charge for residents, a policy that has been in place for over a decade. Another major issue that will be discussed is language policy in education.
Additionally, Isamaa received an offer from sitting mayor Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE) to form a four-party coalition together with Reform and the newly-elected Parempoolsed. However, Isamaa's chair, Urmas Reinsalu, said this week that such an alignment would prove even more fractious than the previous Reform-SDE-Isamaa-Eesti 200 city government, which Reform left in July.
Isamaa won 11 seats at the recent election, less than SDE at 17.
It is not clear at this point who would become Tallinn mayor if a coalition deal is successfully struck.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Aleksander Krjukov




























