Entrepreneurship Policy in Estonia

The main task of this article is to explore the entrepreneurship policy in Estonia. The idea proceeds from the book by Lundström and Stevenson (2001), in which the authors describe, analyse and discuss the development of entrepreneurship policy in ten economies — six EU Member States and four members of APEC. In some respects, this article strives to be a “missing chapter” in the aforementioned book concerning entrepreneurship policy in Estonia. It should be considered as an attempt to apply their approach to a country without a long history in SME development. The article starts with an overview of the theoretical background and goes on to examine entrepreneurship policy (or even economic policy) in Estonia. Examination of SME / entrepreneurship policy documents shows that Estonia is moving towards entrepreneurship policy, but with certain minor reservations. The current Estonian entrepreneurship policy may be regarded as a combination of an extension to SME policy and a holistic policy, the trend of development is towards the latter. The “old” (effective in 2002–2006) policy was almost SME policy and has been mentioned as a basis in the new (for 2007–2013) policy document, which is being prepared now. The policy structures followed the vertical model in the period 1996–2000 (and also earlier), but now Estonia is moving towards a horizontal or multi-ministerial model