Party Analysis: Parempoolsed (Estonia)

A Challenge to Estonian Liberalism

Parempoolsed - literally “the Right-wingers” - is Estonia’s newest attempt to reassert classical liberal economics in a political system that many of its founders believe has drifted steadily leftward since independence. Formally established as a party in 2022 and led since its inception by Lavly Perling, a former prosecutor general, Parempoolsed defines itself through fiscal conservatism, deregulation, and a restrained view of the state, paired with firm support for EU and NATO integration.

Electorally, its rise has been tentative rather than explosive. In the March 2023 parliamentary election, the party secured 2.3 per cent of the vote - well short of the five per cent threshold required to enter the 101-seat Riigikogu. Yet by late 2025, Parempoolsed had begun to look less marginal. Opinion polls placing it at 7-8 per cent, alongside its first meaningful local election breakthroughs - most notably six seats on Tallinn City Council following the October 2025 municipal elections - suggest that it has moved from ideological curiosity toward potential parliamentary contender. Whether this trajectory marks the beginning of a durable realignment or merely another episode of fragmentation within Estonia’s crowded right remains an open question.

Why Parempoolsed Exists

Parempoolsed emerged from a slow-burning schism within Isamaa, long one of Estonia’s principal conservative parties. The rupture was less about nationalism than about liberalism. For a group of economically orthodox members, Isamaa’s participation in government between 2019 and 2021 alongside the far-right Estonian Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) represented not pragmatic coalition-building but ideological capitulation. Association with EKRE’s populism, cultural radicalism, and confrontational style was seen as incompatible with market liberalism and institutional restraint.

Initially formed as an internal faction in mid-2020, Parempoolsed articulated a broader critique of Estonia’s post-1991 trajectory. Its founding manifesto argued that the state had expanded well beyond its original remit, driven by redistribution, bureaucratic growth, and what it described as an uncritical embrace of welfare universalism. When leading figures - including Perling and former ministers and academics - were expelled from Isamaa, formal party formation followed in March 2022.

The timing mattered. Post-pandemic fiscal expansion, rising inflation, and uneven recovery in a small, open, export-dependent economy created space for a party arguing that Estonia’s competitive edge lay not in greater state activism but in renewed economic discipline. Parempoolsed thus positioned itself not as nationalist backlash, but as a corrective: a “true right-wing” alternative for voters alienated both by EKRE’s cultural politics and by what they saw as the managerial centrism of Reform and Isamaa alike.

What the Party Has Achieved

Measured against headline parliamentary results, Parempoolsed’s achievements appear modest. Yet its development has been incremental rather than ephemeral. The party briefly gained a parliamentary presence in late 2022 when Isamaa MP Siim Valmar Kiisler defected, offering visibility if not legislative leverage before losing his seat in 2023. More important has been organisational consolidation. By late 2025, membership exceeded 700 - significant in a country where party organisations remain comparatively small - and fundraising performance was strikingly strong, with over €500,000 raised in donations during 2025 alone.

The October 2025 municipal elections marked a turning point. Securing 4.7 per cent nationally, Parempoolsed translated concentrated urban support into representation, most notably in Tallinn. While its participation in a fragile local coalition - including Centre and EKRE - raised eyebrows, it also demonstrated a willingness to operate within Estonia’s pragmatic coalition culture.

Policy influence has been indirect but not negligible. Through public interventions and local platforms, the party has helped sustain pressure for tax simplification, spending restraint, and further deregulation, particularly in debates around healthcare, energy, and digital governance. Even without parliamentary seats, Parempoolsed has nudged fiscal orthodoxy back toward the centre of political discussion.

What Success Would Look Like

For Parempoolsed, success is defined less by protest than by institutional entry. The immediate objective is to cross the five per cent threshold in the 2027 Riigikogu election, translating current polling into a small but potentially pivotal parliamentary caucus. Six to eight seats would be sufficient to matter in coalition negotiations, particularly if the centre-right requires additional partners to govern.

Substantively, the party seeks to re-anchor Estonia’s political economy around lower taxes, reduced state ownership, and a sharper distinction between universal welfare and targeted social protection. Its vision is unapologetically liberal: a state focused on security, rule of law, and external alignment, leaving economic dynamism to markets and entrepreneurs. On immigration and integration, Parempoolsed aims to occupy a managerial rather than populist space - supporting economically necessary migration while insisting on linguistic and civic integration, and resisting extensions of political rights to non-citizens.

Over the longer term, the party’s ambition is to reshape the right rather than replace it: embedding fiscal discipline as the non-negotiable baseline of centre-right governance, and preventing both welfare expansion and nationalist populism from setting the terms of debate.

Electoral Rules and Strategic Constraints

Estonia’s electoral system both enables and constrains Parempoolsed’s prospects. Proportional representation using the d’Hondt method across multi-member districts allows new parties to emerge, but the five per cent national threshold remains a formidable barrier. The party’s failure in 2023 illustrated the risks of dispersed support, while its later local successes highlight the importance of urban concentration - particularly in Tallinn, where district magnitude and professional demographics favour liberal challengers.

Coalition politics further complicates the picture. No party has ever governed alone, and at polling levels of 7-8 per cent Parempoolsed could plausibly act as a junior partner or kingmaker. Yet fragmentation on the right - split between Reform, Isamaa, EKRE, and newer entrants - raises the danger of mutual underperformance. Electronic voting, widely used in Estonia, adds another layer of volatility, amplifying turnout swings that can either reward disciplined newcomers or punish parties hovering near the threshold.

How Critics See It

Opponents tend to frame Parempoolsed less as a corrective than as a throwback. On the centre-left, critics argue that its emphasis on austerity and privatisation risks deepening inequality in a high-cost society still marked by post-Soviet legacies. From this perspective, Parempoolsed offers ideological purity at the expense of social cohesion.

Centrists and liberals within Reform portray the party as an unnecessary splinter - an Isamaa offshoot whose anti-statist rhetoric overstates Estonia’s supposed “left turn” and underestimates the electorate’s attachment to pragmatic governance. The party’s willingness to cooperate locally with EKRE has proven especially controversial, fuelling accusations that it compromises its liberal credentials when arithmetic demands it.

Even within the broader right, there is scepticism that Parempoolsed represents renewal rather than division: another small party competing for similar voters in a system already prone to fragmentation.

How It May Be Remembered

Parempoolsed’s historical significance will hinge on whether it converts organisational momentum into parliamentary representation. If it enters the Riigikogu and meaningfully shapes fiscal policy, it may be remembered as the force that arrested the quiet expansion of the Estonian state and reasserted classical liberalism in a mature post-transition democracy. If not, it risks fading into the background of Estonia’s 2020s political churn - one more well-articulated but ultimately transient response to inflation, coalition fatigue, and post-pandemic uncertainty.

Either way, its emergence speaks to a broader tension within successful small-state democracies: how to balance competitiveness and cohesion, markets and security, liberalism and resilience. Parempoolsed has named that tension clearly. Whether it can resolve it electorally remains to be seen.