Everyone who has been at the helm of the state in recent years should take responsibility. Our NIMBY culture ("not in my backyard") has grown beyond all reason. It is impossible to make any major energy or industrial investment in Estonia without years of disputes with a local municipality or even in court.

You cannot even build a poultry farm. A few years ago, when interest in building the Väimela large poultry farm faded, OÜ Lõuna-Eesti Talumuna leader Tõnu Vetik summed up Estonia's investment climate well: "It is not possible to build anything big in Estonia, whether wind turbines, poultry farms or pulp mills."

Investors are rational and prefer countries that welcome major investments instead of tripping them up at every turn. The state has had years to change this attitude. Officials talk about making planning easier, but real steps have been few and investor trust has not grown.

Problems with actually completing investments have been made worse by the unstable economic environment created after the 2023 elections. Constant and wide-ranging tax changes — always upward — have led foreign investors to look past Estonia. They prefer countries where taxes remain stable between drafting a business plan and completing an investment, so the plan still works.

This leaves Estonians poorer. Fewer competitive jobs mean lower wages and more unemployment. Unfortunately, the governing parties do not seem to understand this.

While neighboring countries are receiving foreign investments worth billions of euros, Estonia is trying to scrape together small investments to save what can be saved.

Recently we learned that the application threshold for support of up to €20 million — previously meant for companies investing at least €100 million in Estonia — was lowered by several tens of millions to €70 million. For defense industry projects it was lowered to €20 million, and for priority technology (which includes food production and renewable energy) to €30 million.

The government essentially admitted it has failed to attract major investments and now must lower the €100 million bar because applicants simply did not come. Under the previous conditions, the roughly €40 million available for support this year cannot be distributed. Major investment support should not be scattered randomly, and the government must start working seriously to find large investments.

This comes at a time when Germany's Rheinmetall alone is investing about half a billion euros in Lithuania, Finland is building data centers worth billions, and Poland is building a nuclear plant worth billions. Even Latvia received slightly more than €1 billion in foreign investment in 2025. Estonia's figure was nearly twice as low, between €500 million and €800 million depending on the source.

We should not forget that several Estonian entrepreneurs have made their biggest recent investments in Latvia or other nearby countries. These include Frankenburg's €10 million investment in the Ādaži rocket factory and Fibenol's decision to invest €700 million in a Latvian biorefinery.

Skeleton Technologies also did not choose Estonia. Last year it launched super battery production in Varkaus, Finland, and in late November opened supercapacitor factories in Germany and Poland.

Yes, Estonia still has more foreign investment overall than Latvia and Lithuania, but our lead has shrunk sharply in the past year. If the trend continues, our southern neighbors will soon pass us. To prevent that, Estonia's business environment must again become attractive to foreign investors. That requires breaking the NIMBY culture and ending constant tax hikes. Only then can our economy start growing strongly again.

Parempoolsed do not believe that high taxes and large subsidies will bring foreign investment to Estonia. The government has not created a competitive business environment in the past decade. Estonia lacks affordable electricity, fast internet access is still unresolved, and the state's erratic tax policy and heavy bureaucracy drive foreign investors away. It is high time to start improving Estonia's business environment.

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