REUTERS - The center-right coalition to power in Estonia, Country came in January in the euro area after a harsh recession, has largely won parliamentary elections Sunday.
After counting 97% of votes, the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip wins 33 seats out of 101 in the new parliament and its partner, the Union Pro Patria and Res Republica, gets 23, ensuring the coalition an absolute majority, with five more seats in the outgoing assembly.
Analysts expect that the small Baltic country of 1.3 million people stick to the austerity policy that allowed him in January to become the 17th member state of the euro-zone government debt the lowest in the EU.
The Centre Party, main opposition, has been affected by allegations that he solicited funds in Russia, great neighbor that Estonians generally viewed with suspicion. The party officials have denied those rumors.
The Social Democrats, meanwhile, had joined the government after the 2007 elections but the alliance was broken.
The government Ansip was a minority for some time, but defections on smaller parties had come to give it 51 seats in parliament.
Estonia has been facing one of the worst recessions in the EU, with its economy shrank by 14% in 2009.Only its Baltic neighbors, the
Latvia and Lithuania, have experienced worse in the EU.
The country has implemented austerity measures to redress public finances and adopt the euro.
Estonia remains one of the poorest countries of the Union, which she joined in 2004 as well as NATO. But its fiscal situation is sound. The European Commission predicts its total budget deficit of the public sector of 1.6% of GDP for 2011, which corresponds to the average of the euro area.
The state debt, projected at 9.5% of GDP this year will be by far the lowest in the euro zone where the average is in the field to 86.5% of GDP. The Government is committed to achieving a balanced budget by 2014.
