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Estonia's Centrist Party is campaigning to bring in laws requiring all members of the government to hold a university degree or equivalent qualification.

A first draft of the bill was rejected by parliament last November, but the centrists are now working on a new, improved version. They are, they say, worried about the intellectual level of the current government, fewer than 75 per cent of whose members have higher education. According to Centrist MP Tiit Made, such a law would make it clear to young people wanting to make a career in politics that they would have to get a university education.

Representatives of other parties are less enthusiastic, calling the proposal an election gimmick, and pointing out that unless the bill were very carefully drafted, it might be interpreted as obliging the state to provide university education for current ministers.

But Kalle Kulbok of the Royalist Party was even more derisive. Never mind a university degree for ministers, he said, a mandatory IQ test would make more sense.