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prof_eugВышла моя новая научная статья (а то у меня что-то перекос в сторону публицистики пошел), написанная в соавторстве с моим итальянским коллегой Паоло -
Tsybulenko, E.; Amorosa, P.
National minorities in Estonia: 20 years of citizenship policies
L'Europe unie/United Europe (Revue d'etudes europeennes), 6/2012, pp. 85-90
National minorities in Estonia: 20 years of citizenship policies
Introduction
Since after collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia was a permanent target of Russian and, in some cases, international criticism with regard to the situation of the Russian minority[1] and the difficulties of its integration in the social fabric of the new Estonian State. Some Russians, who live in Estonia also believe that they are discriminated. What are the facts behind such assessment? And even if there was no factual basis, why do they have such a perception? It is not an easy question to answer because of several reasons, involving historical profiles in relation to the long Soviet occupation of Estonia but also the current difficult diplomatic relations between Estonia and Russia.
One of the main critical issues in this respect is the one of the so called “gray passports” (persons with undefined citizenship according to the official Estonian terminology) the large number of residents of Estonia that were not in possession of any citizenship (for the largest part Soviet settlers and their descendents) when the new independent state decided for the automatic (re-)acquisition of Estonian nationality, by reinstating in 1992 the Citizenship Act of 1938, only for those who held it before the Soviet occupation and their descendents. The options left to the other residents were to apply for naturalization, gain the citizenship of their country of origin, Russia in the predominant part of the cases, or maintain the undefined status.
The figures were, indeed, staggering: in 1992, almost one third of the population (32%) citizenship’s status was undefined[2].
The purpose of these brief notes is to evaluate, 20 years after the renewed Estonian independence, in the light of the latest demographic figures picturing the country’s population at 31st December 2011, the effects of the policies and legal acts on citizenship and the implications in relation to the claimed discrimination of non-ethnic Estonian minorities.
Estonian legal acts and policies on citizenship, international criticism and internal tensions
The most reliable way to start providing elements for an answer to the questions posed above is to give an account of the evaluation of the issue at stake given at the international level[3] and then compare it with the actual Estonian legislation on citizenship and its effects based on the most recent demographic data available today. Indeed, the only recurring criticism received by Estonia in its short independent history from the international community, in relation to human rights standards, is regards minority issues and the high presence of stateless persons living in its territory.
Already in October 1993, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch issued a report titled Integrating Estonia’s Non-Citizen Minority[4] that, while noticing some possible points of improvement, did not find any systematic or serious abuses with regard to the laws and policies on the acquiring of citizenship. In 1995, Estonia enacted the new Citizenship Act[5] that maintained the focus on the knowledge of Estonian language as a prerequisite for acquiring citizenship by way of naturalization but made harder the related examinations.
Amendments in the following years have been passed to simplify naturalization procedures. For instance, the one passed by the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) on 10th of December 1998 to ease the granting of citizenship to children born in Estonia by stateless parents was particularly welcomed by the international community[6]. According to the new rules, stateless children under the age of 15 born in Estonia could acquire Estonian citizenship through a declarative procedure.
Other legal measures taken in the following years to favor the process of reduction of the number of stateless residents in the country include the waiving, since 2002, of the citizenship test for people with disabilities and the full reimbursement of the expenses sustained for language training in order to pass the test, according to the new article 8(1) of the Citizenship Act entered into force on 1st of January 2004.
After Estonia joined the European Union in the year 2004[7], the debate and tensions in relation to citizenship laws and policies lost force within the international community[8] but continued strongly internally, fueled also by Russia’s continued strong stand on the issue.
A major event, of both practical and symbolic significance, boosted further such internal tensions in 2007. In February, the Parliament introduced a law that prohibited the public display of monuments glorifying the Soviet ruling of the country. Accordingly, in the following April, the government decided to relocate a World War II Red Army memorial, the bronzed statue of a soldier, from the center of Tallinn to the military cemetery. This led to the vibrant protest of the Russian-speaking minority, trying to stop the removal, turning into street clashes, causing the death of one person and several wounded, while three hundred people were arrested. The Russian government used the occasion to criticize once again Estonian authorities[9].
On the other hand, the office of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Agency that has been tasked by the General Assembly (UNGA) to tackle internationally the issue of statelessness[10], maintained some level of international interest on the issue of statelessness in Estonia also in recent years and keeps doing so. An important example is the submission the UNHCR made in July 2010 in relation to the examination of Estonia’s human rights performance within the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)[11], the mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council that since 2006 provides for a general evaluation, every four years, of the human rights record of all UN member States. The submission of UNHCR, in particular, urges Estonia to accede to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and enact reforms that would provide Estonian citizenship for every child born on the territory that would be otherwise stateless. Other requests are the implementation of campaigns to encourage stateless persons to apply for Estonian citizenship and a relaxation of the language requirements of the citizenship test, especially for the elderly, the main component in numerical terms of the stateless residents of Estonia.
New figures and rights of the stateless
The number of stateless persons in Estonia is steadily decreasing. Since the restoration of Estonian independence more than 153,000 people have received Estonian citizenship. Some permanent residents of Estonia have also received Russian, Ukrainian or other countries’ citizenship. The statistic is self-evident - in 1992 the number of stateless persons in Estonia was 32% of the Estonian population, in 1999 - 13% of the Estonian population was stateless. Currently, the number of persons without citizenship is less than 7%[12] of the Estonian population.
According to recently published statistics the number of persons with undefined status has decreased to 93774 persons at the date of 31st December 2011[13]. The data for the year 2011 also shows an encouraging trend: notwithstanding the decreasing number of stateless individuals (and, by logical consequences, of people eligible to apply for naturalization) in 2011, for the first time since 2005, the number of naturalized people (1513) is higher than in the previous year. In 2010, 1184 persons got Estonian citizenship while the highest number of naturalized (22773) goes back to the year 1996, shortly after the new Estonian Citizenship Act was introduced in 1995.
Looking at what practically means to be a permanent resident of Estonia with undefined citizenship status, it can be noted that in terms of freedom of movement, they enjoy even more possibilities than Estonian citizens. This is because the alien’s passport issued by Estonia allows free visa travel within the Schengen area and, at the same time, following a decision of the Russian government of 2008, stateless Estonian residents had visa requirements to enter the Russian territory waived, a possibility that is not given to Estonian nationals.
In Estonia, residents with undefined citizenship enjoy, for instance, the same tax benefits and conditions for health care of citizens. The most critical point of difference is political participation[14]. Since 1996, non-citizen residents have the right to vote in local elections, but the right to run for and vote in national elections is reserved for Estonian nationals.
Conclusions
There are several practical and non-practical reasons why the remaining persons with undefined citizenship have not applied for Estonian citizenship.
We suggest the following to be the main ones.
In the first place, the majority of stateless people who wished to obtain Estonian citizenship, have received it already. The remainder very often simply do not have the intention to get it. In recent years some pragmatic considerations were added. As reminded above, stateless persons with Estonian residence permit can travel without visas to the Schengen zone countries, as well as to Russia. Very often stateless persons have relatives in Russia, a fact that makes for them this visa free travel possibility essential. In general, they enjoy extensive rights. Many of them just do not feel the practical need to gain Estonian citizenship or, anyway, the one of their country of origin that they would anyway have the right to obtain.
A second reason is the lingering of the imperial mentality created by the former Soviet Union, a factor particularly significant within the elderly population of Russian heritage, which as stated above makes the largest part of the stateless residents of Estonia. In the Soviet Union, Russians were considered and treated as a leading nation. Even if officially all nationalities were equal, practically Russians and their culture were always more privileged. When Russian settlers and their descendents were suddenly in a completely changed situation after the renewed Estonian independence, this resulted in a certain collapse of identity, a viewpoint which is incidentally favored by the pro-Kremlin Russian media and authorities who continuously claim that Estonian policies are discriminatory towards minorities[15]. Ca. 61% of the remaining stateless persons and 69% of Russian citizens who are permanent residents in Estonia said they did not want to get Estonian citizenship, as they think it is humiliating to pass the language exam[16]. Once again, it should be underlined how this group is made mostly of elderly people that lived most, if not all, of their lives in Estonia as part of the Soviet Union, with their mother tongue, Russian, used as official language. In this respect, as reported infra, it would be very difficult to deem Estonian policies as overly restrictive and/or discriminatory if compared, for instance, with the current citizenship policies of other EU member states, showing a trend towards hardening the requirements for naturalization with a clear focus on language testing as the main “selection tool”.
A third connected aspect relates to the fact that some stateless persons believe the naturalization procedure to be very complicated. As said above, provided that the other requirements are met, there are two exams to be passed: a language test (B1) and basic questions about the Estonian Constitution (it is possible to consult the text of the Constitution during the exam). Furthermore, as reported above, those who successfully pass the tests are paid back the money they had spent on the language courses. Looking at the practice of other European countries, it is easy to notice a trend towards the raising of the threshold for naturalization requirements in relation to the testing of proficiency in the national language, linked to the growing immigration and political attention to it. Clear examples of such a trend are countries like the Netherlands[17], Germany[18], France[19] and Russia itself. Considering this, it can be argued that the criticism towards Estonia in relation to its naturalization procedure derives from political reasons, in the case of Russia, or the objective problem of the high number of stateless residents, but not from the use of standards different than the ones of some of its EU partners, standards that do not receive, at least in the official fora of the international community, accusations of being discriminatory.
As hinted above, a major role in the perception of the Russian-speaking minority on the issue is played by the Russian mass media campaigns against Estonia’s treatment of its Russian-speaking minority, in many cases directly voiced by President Putin[20]. It has to be underlined, that, indeed, the lack of Estonian language skills within stateless residents is at the core of the controversy on citizenship policies and this also determines the circumstance under which they do not have access to Estonian media and are exposed only to Kremlin media channels broadly represented in Estonia. Thus they hear only one of the bells, constantly labeling them as victims of discrimination. The Russian criticism towards Estonian treatment of its minorities can be seen as hypocritical and defined as propaganda if compared with the attitude of the Russian government and media towards other countries, seen as more politically close. Indeed their targets are always Latvia and Estonia while ex-USSR states in Asia are almost never criticized by Russia for their mistreatment of the Russian minority.
It is difficult to find facts to argue the existence of discrimination on an ethnic basis in Estonia and surely the legal system provides the means to be protected from it, equally available to all. A part of the Russian-speaking minority has declared its distrust of Estonian courts, but even in that case there would be the possibility to apply for legal remedy to the European Court of Human Rights. The fact that, as of today, the Court of Strasbourg has never condemned Estonia for a case involving discrimination can be seen as a sign of a lack of substance sustaining the claims against inequality in the Estonian legal system.
To compare let us analyze the situation with Ukrainians in Estonia. Ukrainian minority here is the second biggest minority after Russians - 2,1 % of the whole Estonian population. There are strong Ukrainian organizations here, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, the Greek-Catholic church (the Uniate Church), and a school for children which is also open to Estonians - it is like a museum, a very interesting place. The Centre was supported by both the former president Arnold Ruutel and the current president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who visited its seat several times. The Cultural Centre obtains a very essential support from the Estonian government – much more than Ukrainian cultural centers in the neighboring states.
A phenomenon to be considered is the fact that a number of Ukrainians in Estonia during Soviet Union times have been also heavily assimilated to Russians and lost their Ukrainian identity. They do not speak Ukrainian, they have a mentality more similar to the one of Russians. Those Ukrainians who retained their Ukrainian identity, appear to be well integrated as other minorities like Tatars, Georgians or Jews appear to be, there are no reports of widespread group related problems. While the issues related to the integration of the Russian minority remain to be solved, important step forward in this respect can be registered. Marju Lauristin, Estonian politician and social scientist, has recently underlined[21] how the situation has dramatically changed since 2007 and that the Bronze Soldier issue has actually brought many positive developments by creating the need for a more open dialogue between the communities. A key point can be seen in education and, more specifically, the reforms made with regard to Russian-language schools in order to give the means to young Russian-speakers not only to be integrated in the Estonian society from a large point of view but especially to be competitive in the Estonian labor market.
In conclusion, notwithstanding many difficulties and setbacks, the need for adjustments and the still high number of stateless residents, Estonian policies on citizenship, read chronologically within the 20 years’ of independence and in combination with the results on integration, are becoming more and more effective towards the goal of a harmonic and functioning society and the overcoming of the consequences of the country’s still recent painful history.
Bibliography
William Hernád, The Russian Minority in Estonia, available at http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/pdf/case-studies/russian-minority.pdf
P. Järve and V. Poleshchuk, Report on Estonia, EUDO Observatory on Citizenship, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, 2010, available at http://eudo-citizenship.eu/docs/CountryReports/Estonia.pdf
K. Kallas, Political Participation of National Minorities in Decision Making Process: Case of Estonia and Latvia, Paper presented at the international workshop focusing on Effective Political, Economic & Social Participation of Minorities, Closing conference 29 – 30 September 2008, Forum Minority Research Institute, Šamorín, Slovak Republic, available at http://www.niton.sk/documents/2-538-5241-kristina_kallas_iii.pdf
J. Krusvall, R. Vetik and J. Berry, The Strategies of Inter-Ethnic Adaptation of Estonian Russians, in Studies of Transition States and Societies, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2009, pp. 3-24
R. Vetik, Ethnic Conflict and Accomodation in Post-Communist Estonia, in Journal of Peace Research 30 (3), 1993, pp. 271-280
[1] For a short yet effective account of the issues connected to the presence of a large Russian minority in Estonia and their historical background cf. William Hernád, The Russian Minority in Estonia, available at http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/pdf/case-studies/russian-minority.pdf (last checked on 21st May 2012). The large presence of Russian-speakers in the country (from 26000 to 602000 individuals in the period between 1945 and 1989, from 2.7% to 39% of the population, cf. R. Vetik, Ethnic Conflict and Accomodation in Post-Communist Estonia, in Journal of Peace Research 30 (3): pp. 271-280) derives from the policies of “russification” implemented by the Soviet Union, that included the settling of people coming from other regions of the Union in Estonia.
[2] Cf. P. Järve and V. Poleshchuk, Report on Estonia, EUDO Observatory on Citizenship, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, 2010, available at http://eudo-citizenship.eu/docs/CountryReports/Estonia.pdf (last checked on 21st May 2012), p. 1.
[3] The main sources that will be considered are major NGO Reports and documentary part of procedures within the main human rights fora of international organizations.
[4] Available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ESTONIA93O_0.PDF, last checked on 21st May 2012.
[5] English version available at http://www.legaltext.ee/text/en/X40001K6.htm, last checked on 21st May 2012.
[6] The related press release issued by the European Union (13922/98) is available at www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/cfsp/ACF2D5.htm (last checked on ) and the one of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities can be found at http://www.osce.org/hcnm/52694 (last checked on 21st May 2012).
[7] The issue of the high number of stateless people was widely discussed in the preparatory negotiations for Estonia’s accession to EU.
[8] With the notable exception of the activity of the office United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, that has continued to underline the issue of the high number of stateless people resident in Estonia, see below.
[9] Cf., for instance, the BBC news articles Estonia seals off Soviet memorial (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6597497.stm, last checked on 24th May 2012) and Estonia removes Soviet memorial (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6598269.stm, last checked on 24th May 2012).
[10] Cf. Resolution 3274 of 1974 that tasked the UNHCR with examining the claim of individuals in relation to the rights recognized by the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Starting from 1994, the UNGA requested the UNHCR to broaden its activity in relation to statelessness, for instance with A/RES/49/169 of 1995 that requires the UNHCR to actively promote the accession to the international legal instruments aimed at the reduction of statelessness and support States in their implementation.
[11] The text of the cited submission is available at http://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/Session10/EE/UNHCR_UNHighCommissionerforRefugees-eng.pdf, last checked on 23rd May 2012.
[12] The source of all the demographic data in the text is the Population Registry of the Estonian Ministry of Interior.
[13] It has to be noted, on the other hand, that deaths make a sizeable percentage of the decrease, cf. the article published on the Estonian Public Broadcasting website on 24th January 2012, Statelessness declining fastest through deaths (available at http://news.err.ee/society/8a444447-9722-4703-a549-3e4c804e8b93, last checked on 30th May 2012).
[14] For an analysis of the issue, see K. Kallas, Political Participation of National Minorities in Decision Making Process: Case of Estonia and Latvia, Paper presented at the international workshop focusing on Effective Political, Economic & Social Participation of Minorities, Closing conference 29 – 30 September 2008, Forum Minority Research Institute, Šamorín, Slovak Republic, available at http://www.niton.sk/documents/2-538-5241-kristina_kallas_iii.pdf, last checked 31st May 2012.
[15] See in more detail infra.
[16] Полещук В., «Неграждане в Эстонии», издательство «Европа», М., 2005, стр.30
[17] The testing of language knowledge was introduced for the first time by the Nationality Act of 1984, requesting for the applicant for naturalization just to be able to sustain a conversation on everyday matters. The standards for testing were unclear and applied differently within the country. A Royal Decree, in application of the new Nationality Act of 2003, set a formal language testing procedure aimed at acknowledging the more restrictive requirement of sufficient oral and written knowledge of the Dutch language.
[18] The Immigration Act of 2004 introduced the requirement for naturalization of proof of sufficient knowledge of the German language.
[19] Already since 1927, the applicant for naturalization had to prove to be sufficiently fluent in the French language through a short interview with a civil servant. Since 1st of January 2012 (Decree 2011-1265), applicants have to hold a diploma given by an institution recognized by the state acknowledging proficiency at B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
[20] For instance, most recently in an article titled Russia and the changing world which appeared on Moskovskie Novosti on the 27th of February 2012 (english translation provided by Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti at http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20120227/171547818.html, last checked on 21st May 2012).
[21] See the article on the Estonian Public Broadcasting website of 26th April 2012, 5 years later: Bronze Soldier riots not likely to occur again, says Professor, available at http://news.err.ee/society/0287a0b7-9dfd-4d28-9bae-d7f8f5ddcfa2, last checked on 6th June 2012.
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Date: 2012-11-19 06:56 pm (UTC)