Our guest on Vikerraadio's "Reedene intervjuu" is entrepreneur and politician Taavi Kotka. Let's start with politics. You've once again been elected to the Viimsi Municipal Council in the ranks of the Reform Party and you're now serving as the council chair. The last time you held this position, you didn't leave on the happiest note, as you weren't able to accomplish everything you had initially set out to do. Why return to politics now?

Personally, I don't really consider local government to be politics in the traditional sense — though, of course, it is politics and I won't argue that. You're right to call me a local politician. The truth is, I left things unfinished last time. I didn't manage to get everything done in those four years and, back then, the whole subject was very new to me. As with any new discipline, you need time to adjust and learn. At the time, I was inexperienced and green, but this time around, I'm clearly more knowledgeable and have a more focused agenda, especially when it comes to my own village. That's what I set out to accomplish and I received a mandate from the voters. So I'm giving it another shot — maybe this time I'll be able to get more done.

But you still haven't joined the party? You ran on the Reform Party's list, but chose not to become a member. Why is that?

You can get a million votes in an election, but every member still has just one vote on the council — there are 21 members total. If you want to get anything done, you need a majority. So if you're trying to go it alone, hopping from one foot to the other, you won't accomplish anything. You have to be a team player. Of the groups currently active in Viimsi, the Reform Party team is, for me, the strongest. I ran on their list in the previous election as well. But yes, I'm still not a party member.

Why not join the party? In some ways, it would seem like a logical step.

I don't see why it should be considered logical, because at the local level, people are elected as individuals, not as party representatives. Local people are focused on making local life better. I don't have any ambition right now to go change the tax system or do anything else at the national level, so I don't see a reason to join a party.

Why don't you have that ambition? You've been critical of various things happening in Estonia and have gotten personally involved in some cases. Why not join a party?

I think staying out of a party actually gives me more freedom. I see myself primarily as an engineer, and the main goal or mindset of an engineer is to use their own hands to make the world a better place. Mente et Manu — "with mind and hand" — as TalTech's motto says.

The fact that I don't belong to any party gives me the freedom to speak up. If I see a problem, I can criticize it freely. I don't have to take party politics or anyone else into account. And if there's a way I can help directly, I will.

Regardless, at this point you still carry a certain label or association with the Reform Party. When you speak out on critical issues, some people might wonder whether there's a political undertone to it.

I've been very vocal in criticizing the Reform Party as well — take the drone sector, for example, which clearly falls under the Ministry of Defense.

Well, several Reform Party members have also criticized what's happening within the party.

We don't need to go down that road. In the end, I've handled things my own way and intend to keep doing so.

In a way, this is actually part of the problem and I assume you'd agree that for many people who are active in society, stepping into broader politics is simply something they avoid.

There's a very simple reason for that. People don't realize that we have a lot of career politicians and being a politician is a profession — it's a source of income for many. That's why we often see so-called compromises that raise eyebrows where you think, "Wait a minute — how did that happen?" But once you understand that, for many, the main motivation is to cover their car lease and some deal has to be made so that the paycheck starts or keeps coming in, then you start to grasp their mindset and logic.

I worked in the public sector for four years. After selling my first shares, I had a non-compete clause and instead of just sitting at home, I took a job in government. But what did that lead to? Not being labeled Reform, but I got labeled as a PEP — a politically exposed person. That means you can't open a bank account anymore.

If you're an engineer and entrepreneur and suddenly you can't open an international bank account because you've served your country — because maybe you're seen as potentially corrupt or something — well, let's just say you end up doing serious damage to your life. You serve your country, think you're being patriotic, trying to help, and then you get slapped with a label like you've done prison time. You stepped in to help and got punished for it.

And becoming a politician — the whole mudslinging that goes on during elections — even in Viimsi, I was the first one to get a mustache drawn on my campaign poster... You really need to be a strong person to go through all of that.

And then the question becomes — why bother? Your life ends up being damaged. Like you just said, "You've got the Reform Party label on you." If your comment mattered to me... — it does matter because of how you said it, as if that label were something shameful.

It's not necessarily something shameful.

True, and that's exactly my point — but in Estonia, "politician" is a word with a negative ring to it. You started the interview by saying I'm an entrepreneur and a politician. Even worse — a municipal politician.

I didn't mean it as an insult at all.

In Estonian, we just tend to perceive it as something negative. And people simply don't want that label. But I look at it differently — I see myself as an engineer and when there's something that needs to get done, I do it. For example, if there's something I need to accomplish for my village, then I have to be hands-on. That means taking the necessary steps: going through the elections, joining a team, getting a seat at the table and then trying to do what I set out to do. There's no other way.

Maybe the real issue is that politicians' salaries are too low for the work they do. A lot of people who could live perfectly well in the private sector — without being labeled a PEP, without the negative connotations — simply don't go into politics because, on top of all the negativity, the pay isn't good enough.

No, I don't think that's it. Many people I know — friends and acquaintances who've considered going into politics — would never do it for a salary of five or ten thousand euros.

Maybe it should be twenty-five thousand instead?

That's a completely different model — one that does exist in the world. It's the Singapore model, where the prime minister earns 25 times more than the U.S. president. That's truly a different kind of society. They pay their top people extremely well, and as a result, surgeons and top dentists go into politics — because not only do they get to serve their country, but they're also very well compensated for it.

The current U.S. president probably isn't expected to live off just his official salary.

Agreed. What that essentially illustrates is the difference between two systems: in one, public sector employees and politicians are paid well below the market average; in the other — like in Singapore — the state is treated like a top-level enterprise and its leaders are paid salaries equivalent to top corporate executives.

Don't you see it as a problem that we're essentially unable to attract top executives into politics?

It's still possible to attract top executives — we even have a few examples. The problem lies elsewhere. In fact, I don't even like the term "top executive." We've got plenty of professional executives sitting on the bench already. What I value more are entrepreneurs — the people who not only take on leadership roles, but also take real risks with their own money. People who have started something from scratch, built it up and taken full responsibility for it. They're a different breed. We have no shortage of executives — people who come in to manage or maintain something — but the initial risk, the foundation, has already been taken on by someone else.

You mentioned your own experience working in the public sector as the state's chief of IT.

Calling me the state's "chief of IT" is a bit of an overstatement.

By most accounts, you did well in that role, but finding your successor turned out to be unexpectedly difficult. With all due respect to those who followed, no one quite managed to fill your shoes.

The issue might be that I'm a different type altogether — I'm a certified engineer, someone who actually knew what I was doing from a technical standpoint. I think my successors have mostly come from public sector or humanities backgrounds. And yes, we really haven't managed to get an engineer into that role since.

Do you think that kind of person is necessary?

Yes and no. Different periods call for different types of people. One advantage I had was that I wasn't building a career in the public sector, so I could afford to be more radical in my statements and reforms. If someone didn't like what I was doing and I got fired, nothing would've really happened to me as a result. But people whose careers are tied to the public sector can't be as free in what they say or propose.

Still, the core question is how we structure our society to make these things possible. Your path to becoming the state's IT lead was, in essence, quite singular. You had a cool-down period and needed something to apply yourself to — and thanks to timing, contacts and ideas, that opportunity took shape. But building a society around that kind of structure is extremely difficult. How do we find those unique individuals and moments and how do we harness them?

I've actually proposed an idea. Right now, if someone in the public sector does something truly radical and meaningful, the people who came up with it and made it happen get nothing more than a pat on the back. There are no stock options, no bonuses.

And on the flip side, if it doesn't work out, they get fired. The way motivation works in the public sector is completely off balance.

I've presented this idea more broadly: I would give people a chance. Those who take a risk and carry out some bold reform — sure, they'll be criticized and they'll definitely get hammered in the media. Take a great example: our ID card. When it first launched, even a well-known tech journalist like Henrik Roonemaa trashed the project for three or four years. But today, we look at it as a source of national pride. Still, the people behind it — many of them burned out. Let's be honest: some ended up turning to alcohol. And today, they're seen as heroes. We don't remember their names, but they took the risk, clung to the vision, insisting it was the right thing — "just wait, it'll take time." And it did take time — ten years. Now it's the foundation of our digital society.

How much has Estonia gained from that? Billions — in reputation, innovation, everything. So why not give a few million to the people who made that possible?

In the private sector, this is standard practice. If someone builds an entirely new business, they're given a stake in it. A small one — but if that small share grows significantly, it might be worth half a million, maybe a million.

It's a beautiful idea on paper, but completely unworkable in real life.

Why?

The question becomes: Who decides? How is it measured? Who gets evaluated and by what criteria?

Estonia has a unique trait. Why are we such a strong IT country? We didn't start that way. At first, we actually failed pretty badly. We tried to use IT to solve everything — pushing all kinds of services into technology.

Take, for example, an Italian buying a car from an Estonian. That's a complex service, a foreign national, different legalities. We tried to build a single process that would handle both Estonian-to-Estonian and Italian-to-Estonian transactions. It was messy and complicated — nobody used that system.

Then we thought: wait a second. An Italian buying a car from an Estonian happens maybe once a year. That person can just go to the service desk. But an Estonian buying from another Estonian — that's 99 percent of the transactions. So let's make that simple and digital.

Once we understood that we don't need to serve everyone with every solution and started applying the 80/20 rule, our technology — our IT systems — became much simpler. Even our tax systems got easier.

It's the same with this issue. If you think about public sector motivation — yes, it's an enormous topic. How do we motivate teachers, police officers? Who qualifies? Civil servants only? You're right — there are a million questions.

But no problem ever gets solved by trying to tackle everything all at once.

The same approach applies here. Let's start small. Let's identify just three problems in our society. Have a public discussion — on ERR, in Äripäev, wherever — and define those issues clearly. As a society, let's attach a reward to each one.

I'll use an example from my own backyard: We need 5,000 drone pilots. Whoever solves that — great, here's your prize. It's that simple. No need to overcomplicate it. I don't need the bonus myself, but I want people to understand the idea: we don't have to fix everything right away.

That's how learning happens. That's how startups are built. You start with one small thing, learn as you go, fix mistakes, improve and maybe in ten or fifteen years, you get somewhere meaningful. But you'll never get anywhere if you don't start today.

Yes, but if we look at Estonia's political landscape, the idea that someone would lead a single project with long-term focus for ten or fifteen years — it's just not realistic.

That's exactly where options come into play. The whole point of options is that every organization evolves. I might build a team today, give out options and later realize that someone's no longer the right fit — I let them go and bring in someone new. But the options that person already earned stay with them. So if we eventually reach a successful outcome, yes, they won't earn more going forward, but they'll still benefit from the work they did. If the project succeeds, they'll get a bonus.

It doesn't have to be ten or fifteen years. What matters is that during their time, they contributed enough to earn their share.

We already know there are big reforms we've been putting off — education reform, pension reform — and we're never going to get them done, because politically, they're suicide. Just look at what happened in Lääneranna with school closures — political suicide. No one wants to take that risk. (The Supreme Court recently overturned a decision by the local council to close several small schools in Lääneranna Municipality following parents' protests – ed.)

But on the other hand, we know full well we don't have the money. It makes no sense to keep schools open for two or three kids. It's the classic chicken-and-egg problem. This is a tough example — it's a complex issue. It's not as simple as saying, "Let's pay a million and close some schools." But think about it: if a group takes on a really difficult task that the country needs and there's no ready-made solution, they have to invent and implement it, then why not share the benefits with those who make it happen?

Because right now, we're wasting at least €100 million a year on an inefficient school network. If we can make it more efficient, the country saves money. So why not share part of that with the people who made it possible?

Often the issues we face aren't really problems that can be "solved" — they're questions of choices. Take the Lääneranna school network example. Everyone whose life changes when the nearby school closes — people who've been able to provide their kids with education in small classes, largely funded by other taxpayers — will never agree to that change. It's not about solutions; it's about choices.

You're absolutely right — it is about choices. But let's look at it from an engineer's perspective. If there's a real problem — if we feel the pain of it — then we have to start looking for ways to solve it. In the end, you always need people and you need to set up the right incentives. When good people and strong motivation come together, you usually get results.

If I were looking at this as an engineer, I'd start by figuring out how to build the right team with the right motivation to actually get the job done. That's a leadership challenge, of course — but that's how I'd approach it.

If we look at this purely from an engineering standpoint, then it would make sense to relocate everyone from small towns, where the value added per person is extremely low, to Tallinn or Viimsi where it's significantly higher, sometimes by a factor of several. And yet, that's not something you could ever realistically sell to Estonian society.

Of course. We don't jump straight to the end result in any of these cases. Urbanization has been going on for over a century and it's still happening — small towns are gradually emptying out. An engineer doesn't solve the entire problem in one go; we move toward solutions step by step, with the help of certain structures.

Take my own example: I started training drone pilots because I saw that the state wasn't addressing the issue. Sure, I'm not training 5,000 people overnight, but I am training 56 a week.

Let's talk about your education projects. You're probably best known for your work in teaching engineering to girls — HK Unicorn Squad has grown remarkably large by now.

We've reached 15 percent of all children.

Fifteen percent of all children or just girls?

Since the project has grown so large, it needs a bit of context — otherwise the numbers can get a little misleading. Around 9,000 to 10,000 children are born in Estonia each year and about half of them are girls. Our school enrolls about 800 new students annually, so in terms of girls, that actually gives you an even higher percentage.

And it's no longer just about girls. In cooperation with the Smart Future Foundation, we're also teaching engineering in middle schools — we're modernizing what's traditionally been called "technology education." Right now, technology classes can still mean crocheting, knitting, cooking, woodshop — it varies widely by school.

Schools that want to teach modern engineering can reach out to us. We provide pre-prepared lesson plans along with the necessary equipment — drones, robots and so on. What's unique about the girls' school setup is that we don't just give schools the gear to sit on a shelf — we send it out with a lesson, complete with descriptions and content, and after the class, the materials are returned to us.

Our central warehouse is in Viimsi where three logistics coordinators send out crates across Estonia twice a day and the materials are returned afterward. For example, a single drone might cost €200 and a school would need to buy at least 10 of them to run a full class — so that's a significant investment. But with our system, one drone is used in 20 different schools, which brings the per-use cost down to about €10 — suddenly it's not that expensive anymore.

With this kind of logistics setup, we can deliver modern tech education very efficiently. We're able to share not only costly equipment, but also methodologically complex content, across the entire country, and that brings the cost down to a very reasonable level.

How many years have you been doing this?

Eight.

Have you measured how effective it's been?

One clear indicator is interest — we have more demand than we can meet. There are always girls on our waitlist — about a thousand of them, unfortunately, that we simply can't accommodate.

Another metric comes from asking the girls themselves: When they first enroll, we ask whether they see their future connected to IT. Fewer than 10 percent say yes. But three years later, when they finish our program, 86 percent answer that same question with a yes.

Now, that doesn't mean they'll all immediately go study engineering — not at all. But it's similar to learning music or ballet. If you don't do ballet as a child, you're never going to become a ballerina. If you start at age 15 or 16, it's too late. It's often the same with music.

Today, international research confirms that you need to make an impression on a child's brain before around age 11 — before puberty starts. And it's not enough to just visit a factory once or hear a talk by someone like Karoli Hindriks — though those things are also important. What children need is a longer-term engagement with a subject. Something sustained, that leaves a mark and leaves the door open, so that when they're making career decisions later, they might consider STEM — something they otherwise wouldn't.

We're starting to see the impact. Previously, maybe one in five or six women chose engineering. That number is growing.

Does the program pay off financially?

Financially, no. We still have to cover part of the costs ourselves.

So how sustainable is it?

In the sense that it keeps growing, I'd say it is sustainable. The scale is increasing, more foundations are getting involved and there's growing interest across Estonia. We've shown that if we wanted to offer modern engineering education — not just to girls, but to all children — and give them a proper foundation by having them engage with it for, say, three years from second to fourth grade, then the cost to the state would be about €2.5 million per year.

At the state level, that's not even a particularly large amount of money.

That's what I keep saying, but the Ministry of Education sees it differently.

Sounds like you need to step in and help the ministry.

What we see is that girls' confidence changes. The way they approach problems changes — whether they even dare to tackle them changes. They're no longer afraid to make mistakes.

When they first come to us, they're shy — very much the "I'm-not-sure-I-can-fly-a-drone" type. But that transforms over three years. By the end, they're holding soldering irons with confidence, they know what they're doing.

At first, they rely heavily on the instructor. But by the third or fourth course, they'll watch the instruction video together with the teacher, then start working on it themselves — build the robot from start to finish.

What happens to a young person's self-confidence during that time is invaluable.

We've shared our methodology with other countries as well — told them, go ahead and try it out. We're not guarding it like some trade secret. And other countries are seeing the same effect. Education, after all, is fairly universal. Whether it's math — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division — we teach the same things all over the world, maybe with slightly different techniques. It's the same with engineering.

This is a bit of a broader question, but in some ways, school education hasn't changed much in the last hundred years. We still have textbooks, teachers, tests and exams.

I'd push back on that a bit. Just for fun, I gave my kids the 1865 entrance exam from MIT — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the top engineering university in the world, based in Boston. At the time, my kids were in eighth and ninth grade and they solved all the problems.

In other words, what was considered MIT's standard in 1865 is equivalent to the level of an eighth-grade student in Estonia today. A problem like "find x" in a two-variable equation was considered advanced back then.

This week, my child had a Russian language assignment that involved producing a video — with subtitles — and they were allowed to use AI. I mean, when I was in school, if someone had told me, "Tomorrow, you need to make a video with subtitles and everything," I would've thought it was a joke. Back then, we'd press a maple leaf between sheets of blotting paper and write "maple" under it — that was the height of multimedia.

So, the kinds of tasks our children are handling in school today are much more complex than what we dealt with. Thanks to technology, things can be done faster, of course. The kinds of presentations they create now — before, that would've meant hours in a library and expensive photocopies. Now we're solving tasks that are in a completely different dimension.

Yes, the format — textbooks, teaching methods — may feel similar. But the content and the complexity of the assignments have changed drastically.

What I was getting at with that question is this: all these technological tools open up a world of possibilities, yes, but they're also deeply changing the learning process. Generative AI could take us to a place where students no longer actually understand the material.

I don't agree. We just need time to adapt. People always adjust to new technologies.

When the internet first arrived, kids started doing their homework by copying content straight from the web — assignments that were meant to be done using ENE, ENEKE or archival materials. Teachers caught on and adjusted their methods.

It's exactly the same with AI. Instead of assigning a traditional essay on "Pisuhänd," which frankly is quite pointless — kids will just ask AI to write it and won't understand a word — you could ask them to create a two-minute short video using AI, where they highlight the main character's phlegmatic nature.

We can tell whether they truly understand or not. To feed that script into AI, they still need to put in effort. They need to understand the material first. So the methods change, but the outcomes are actually more complex and nuanced.

We just need to give teachers time to adjust and learn how to work with these tools.

Do you think there are any real remedies for the challenges posed by generative technology?

I'll return to the point that we're now able to give students assignments that would've been unthinkable for, say, eighth graders in the past. If, back when I was in school in 1988, someone had told me in eighth grade, "Come up with ideas to solve the world's climate crisis," then...

Back then, no one was even thinking about the global climate.

Exactly. But just as an example — think about what a student would've had to do at that time. Where would they have found information? There's no point in giving assignments that simply can't be completed.

But now, thanks to access to information, we can give students assignments on a whole new level. Yes, the tasks still need to match their developmental stage.

I'm improvising with these examples, but my point is this: look at how simple the assignments used to be at a place like MIT — because that's where the knowledge level was. And look at how much more complex the tasks we now give students just to determine whether they're a good fit for a certain school.

What I'm saying is — technology gives us the ability to assign far more complex, multi-dimensional tasks.

Estonia has also launched its artificial intelligence initiative, the so-called AI Leap (TI-hüpe).

In my view, it's moving very slowly.

There are certainly valid concerns — if you're not just copying some widely used model from elsewhere in the world, but instead trying to figure out how to apply AI in the education system yourself, you have to think through how to involve teachers, how to implement models that are evolving rapidly.

We've actually been working on this for a year and a half already — we started a bit before the AI Leap initiative was even announced. And what we've seen is that teachers are very receptive and kids adapt to it extremely well. So yes, it can be done.

Kids are surely using all these models constantly.

The main issue is actually that it's mostly the kids who can afford to use them — because the good models cost money. Not all parents are able or willing to provide access.

In my view, the core of this so-called AI Leap should be exactly that — and it wouldn't even be hard to do: make sure everyone has access, that the licenses are in place. That's where it should start. But even that is proving difficult right now.

We have purchased some licenses, though.

True. But there's no need for us to argue about that here — we're not the ones responsible for getting that work done.

In some ways, the quality of education in Estonia varies significantly depending on the school and the parents' financial situation.

I'll say it outright here on the show — the gap is staggering. How do we know? Because when we send the same assignments to different schools, we get feedback from the teachers. And based on that, I can say that educational inequality in Estonia is very real.

Sure, we can't compare every school to a place like the Tallinn Secondary School of Science (Reaalkool) where the students are handpicked and have a completely different work ethic, but even among so-called regular schools, there are big differences. A child from Saaremaa is not automatically at the same level as a child from Tartu County and vice versa. It depends heavily on the school itself.

Educational inequality is a real and pressing issue in Estonia.

And there's no real solution.

Rather, the issue is that we must not allow the bar to drop below a certain minimum. In my opinion, the decision to split mathematics into "narrow" and "broad" tracks was incredibly weak — a clearly populist move. Whoever made that decision should take political responsibility. It was a poor choice.

Strong math is the foundation of life. The ability to understand money, to be financially literate — all of that depends on basic mathematical knowledge.

Another thing that deeply bothers me — both in Tallinn and Tartu — is this idea that everyone should get a high school spot. And in Tallinn, there's even been talk of using a lottery to assign students to schools. That's, frankly, ridiculous.

On one hand, I'm incredibly proud of Estonian education — we should be. The PISA test shows that we're number one in Europe.

But instead of building on that success — going to Oxford or Cambridge and saying, "Look, we have the best education in Europe, would you be interested in creating a direct pathway for our top students?" — instead of leveraging our edge and aiming for elite global opportunities, we're busy "equalizing" everything and dragging the average down.

We're doing things like saying, "Well, if I have a registered address in downtown Tallinn, then my kid should get into this school by lottery." That's absurd.

Imagine if sports clubs worked that way — "Hey, your kid is really good at soccer this year, so we'll take your strong players and spread them out to weaker teams to keep things fair." We understand in sports that you need strong clubs to develop strong athletes. But in education, we fail to see that logic.

Instead of comparing ourselves to the global best, which we should do because PISA shows we're there, we're focused on how to make Tallinn Secondary School of Science a little more accessible or how to slightly improve GAG (Gustav Adolf Grammar School), like that's the real issue.

Surely you understand that students' academic performance is often tied to how much financial and time resources their parents have to support them.

That's backed up by international research — it's not just true in Estonia, but worldwide. Children who study more with their parents, frankly, achieve significantly better results.

There's also the broader question of how much we want the education system to influence intergenerational social mobility. Should the system be working to increase social mobility or not? The Ministry of Education seems to be leaning toward increasing it.

I'll be honest — I don't really understand what the Ministry of Education is doing these days. So I'll refrain from commenting on that.

Broadly speaking, you must sense that while in the 1990s or early 2000s, a young, ambitious person in Estonia could become wealthy relatively quickly, over time, a person's future prospects and life trajectory have become increasingly tied to their background.

That's exactly why we work with girls — because I don't see any other viable path for Estonia to remain globally competitive. We're on the edge of the European Union, next to an aggressive neighbor, so as not to say a monstrous state.

We have no choice but to raise a generation of smart people who can do smart work here, work that brings value or growth elsewhere, because our own small country is too isolated and too far away for anyone to build factories here. Sure, a few do, but it's not very logical: you have to import raw materials, assemble everything here and then ship it back to Europe. There are exceptions, but long-term and at scale, it's not sustainable economically.

I've led several IT companies and I've seen firsthand how few women engineers there are. It's a real problem that needs addressing. Increasing women's competitiveness, giving them more opportunities in the labor market is essential. And the state has done nothing about this. In fact, it's made things worse by reinforcing outdated ideas, like girls should stick to crocheting and knitting. Or worse, the mindset — held by more than one political party — that a woman's place is "between the stove and a fist."

We have to take steps to counter that. I didn't see any systemic change happening — no updates to tech education, no efforts to create new opportunities for girls. So we took action. And together with international researchers, we've now proven that teaching technology to girls isn't the same as teaching it to boys. It requires some specific adjustments — differences in approach, environment — just like in physical education where that distinction is well understood. PE classes for boys and girls are similar but not identical. And we accept that. It's perfectly fine for girls to do PE with other girls and boys with boys.

It's the same in engineering education. We've proven this methodologically. But again, when it comes to national policy, I agree — this is not part of Estonia's official strategy. It's driven by individuals taking initiative and taking risks.

The way I see it, we're not risking taxpayer money. Yes, there's been some support from EU funding, but let's just say: we haven't taken a cent out of your pocket.

You were part of the advisory council of entrepreneurs that advises the government.

I still am.

What's your take — do you think Estonia is finally making real progress in reducing bureaucracy and implementing what entrepreneurs have long been asking for?

I think this is just another round of what you might call a "campaign push" — the kind of initiative that pops up every ten years or so. I was one of the initiators the last time as well, back in 2014–2015, when we started working on zero bureaucracy and reducing red tape in general.

We made big speeches, issued press releases and collected around 300 proposals on how to reduce bureaucracy. A large share of those — more than half — did get implemented, but not at the legislative level. Most of those issues were solved through technology.

What's different now is that this new commission clearly has a broader mandate. Back then, most of the cleanup work was done with officials — each looking around in their own field and submitting suggestions. And since the IT investment money was controlled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, we allocated resources based on which problems could be solved.

Today we have two goals. One is to cut pointless bureaucracy and the other is to find ways to drive economic growth, whether through legislative changes or targeted support measures that would help the economy perform better.

We've been at it for about six to nine months now and we're still largely in the phase of dealing with pain points — identifying what's frustrating or draining for entrepreneurs and trying to reduce that burden. Hopefully, in the new year, we'll be able to shift more attention toward proactive thinking: what can we do to actually grow the economy and make the business environment stronger.

So what should we actually do to grow the economy and improve life in Estonia? We don't have the power to end the war in Ukraine.

Agreed, but not everything will be done.

What's been good and deserves recognition is the role of Viljar Arakas and the prime minister in putting this commission together. They brought in one, sometimes two people from each of the country's major economic sectors, people who should be capable of identifying what needs to change specifically in their field.

I represent IT and startups on the commission. And to be honest, the IT and startup sector has had a strong lobbying voice for the past 20 years. We're not really in a position where we need major changes anymore.

Ten or so years ago, we did have a key issue: Estonia lacked sufficient capital for startup investment. So we worked together with the state, with Latvia, Lithuania and the EU to create a fund-of-funds system. That allowed private funds to double their capacity with support from the Baltics and the EU. It worked extremely well — it jump-started our entire startup sector.

Today we have solid investment funds, a startup ecosystem that grows year after year and delivers better and better results. That success came because the sector worked closely and effectively with the government.

Now, this commission is trying to find something similar in other sectors. We're looking for that one lever in each area that could give the sector a boost — something that would unlock potential or accelerate growth.

I don't need to know the ins and outs of how to improve the forestry sector, for example. But I can contribute once ideas are on the table — help assess them or compare with what we did in IT or startups. The main expectation is that each sector brings its own concrete ideas for improvement.

I gather that compared to the last time, there are many more ideas on the table now.

Three times more.

And now submissions are being closed so the Riigikogu can at least approve some of them?

Yes, that part of the process is actually quite tough. You might think it's simple — sit at a table, make a decision — but then it goes to the government. The government either approves or rejects it. Suppose they approve it — then the legal amendments and proposals are drafted. Then it goes to the Riigikogu, where it has to pass three readings — that's a minimum of three months, usually more. You can't speed it up. That's the hardest part.

Actually implementing a change usually takes about three-quarters of a year and that's already fast.

Politicians are also expected to assess whether everything businesses are asking for is politically desirable and whether people might get upset or feel harmed by the changes.

I haven't seen any proposals in the current process that would be radical enough to disrupt society. Sure, any change will be inconvenient for someone — if it weren't, there would be no point in making changes at all.

Take immigration, for example. If you lower the salary threshold required for someone to be allowed to work in Estonia, that creates immediate downward pressure on wages for the people already living here.

At the same time, it's interesting that many of the same people who worry about immigrants also listen to Neivelt and others who say that if only 8,000 to 9,000 children are born each year, then in 80 years Estonia's population will be down to 700,000 — not 1.3 million. If we want to maintain our population, smart immigration — and I stress, smart immigration — is essential to the survival of our nation.

So you take the view that, instead of boosting birth rates, it would make more sense to...?

There isn't a single country in the world where state policy has successfully increased birth rates. Not one.

Hungary's example — tax breaks for mothers and so on — none of those policies have proven effective.

In Hungary's case, one could argue that Orbán's regime is so repressive that without incentives, no one would be having children at all.

Maybe. But let's think like engineers — if the goal is to replenish the population, if immigration isn't the answer and boosting the birth rate is your only option, then the reality is: there is no proven policy model in the world that causes families to start having large numbers of children.

Especially not in developed countries that prioritize equality and quality of life.

Exactly. It also has to do with women's education. All examples of high birth rates are strongly correlated with low levels of education among women.

Except for Israel, which has solved the issue by paying ultra-religious people to have lots of children.

Right, and to do that in Estonia, we'd need to create a group of ultra-religious people — which, frankly, we wouldn't even like. According to Wikipedia, Estonia is the least religious country in the world. Only 16 percent of people here believe in any kind of higher power. The next least religious country is Sweden, with 19 percent.

So how would we suddenly become ultra-religious without religion?

I'm not entirely sure Estonians are that irreligious — they may just not believe in structured religion.

True. Around 50 percent of Estonians believe in witchcraft — like, if a black cat crosses the road, you check whether it went left to right or the other way. If it went left to right, that means your day's going to get better.

So, is life in Estonia going to get better?

The economic hit we took — yes, a lot of it is due to the war in Ukraine. But all things considered, we've taken very little damage. We're at the edge of Europe, we don't have natural resources, we're practically a front-line country — and yet, in my opinion, we're doing surprisingly well.

Yes, we've had even better times in the past. But I see people attending our drone training courses, I see parents bringing their kids to our schools — they want to be here. That spirit hasn't disappeared. We're not seeing a mass exodus. It hasn't happened.

Look at Lithuania — they've lost 20 percent of their population.

People often say Lithuania is doing great. Sure, but go to Vilnius and see for yourself: is life really better there? Or go to Germany with a Lithuanian — I'll buy three beers with my money, they'll buy two.

We should calmly look in the mirror and ask ourselves: can we do something to make our lives better here? Yes, we can. So let's do it. Let's get our hands dirty, live and love this country — because we don't have it better anywhere else.

Let me give you an example. I have an American friend who moved to Hungary because his wife wanted to return to her home country. He's lived there for 15 years, he's now a Hungarian citizen, passed the language exam, but when I visited him this spring — and we had a few too many glasses of wine, as men sometimes do — we got philosophical.

I asked him straight: "You left the U.S. — are you happy?"

He said, "I've lived here for twenty years. I have citizenship, I speak the language... but I still feel like an outsider. I walk into a room and people go quiet."

He said, "Back in America, where I was born, life would've been better."

We don't get to choose who we're born as or where. But once we're here, we have to figure out how to make the best of this life.

We're Estonians. And we'll stay Estonians. So let's protect, nurture and grow this small country of ours.

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