Estonia Political Briefing: Entering a New Political Season E-MAP Foundation MTÜ

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 21, No. 1 (EE)

Sept 2019

Estonia political briefing: Entering a new political season E-MAP Foundation MTÜ

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

Entering a new political season

It is a very well-known bit of common knowledge that a day of summer (let alone a summer vacation period) is considered ‘sacred’ in a Nordic country. Arguably, this approach is fully applicable to the particular case of Estonia – in general, the 2019 summer was relatively quiet as compared to the very turbulent post-elections spring. Even thought the current governmental coalition is in a survival mode, cohesion wise, but the second Jüri Ratas-led Estonian Government still ‘lives on’, having battled its way through the very difficult months. At the same time, there is a certain cost that the coalitional partners have had and will continue having to pay due to some reputational losses – evidently, it is applicable to each of the three political parties (the ‘centrists’, Isamaa, and EKRE), which make up the current Government.

The most recent public poll that was carried out in August showed that “[t]he combined support for the three-party […] coalition […] was 38.4%”1 only, a massive drop from the elections-bound results back in March 2019. On the background of this development, the main oppositional party in the country – the Reform Party – scored 36.8% alone (up a bit more than 2% if compared to the July-recorded results), while the other major member of the current Estonian parliamentary opposition – the Social Democratic Party – made a noticeable improvement as well, reaching 13% of public support in August2. It can only mean that had a parliamentary election been held in August, the Reform Party would have been in a comfortable position to completely replace the existing governmental coalition in the country by asking the ‘social democrats’ and the non-parliamentary Estonia 200 (6.8% in the latest poll) to arrange a government together. As it was already discussed in one of the previous briefings, such a configuration would have been a real option, had the Estonia 200 not lost its initial public approval together with their speculatively ‘forecasted’ seats in the Riigikogu. In any case and because of many reasons, Prime Minister Jüri Ratas has a challenging period ahead – his own Centre Party is on the 16%3 level of public support, a far cry from 23.1% they enjoyed back in March.

1 ‘Support for Reform Party continues to grow’ in Postimees. 26 August 2019. Available from [https://news.postimees.ee/6761872/support-for-reform-party-continues-to-grow]. 2 ‘Support for Reform Party continues to grow’. 3 ‘Support for Reform Party continues to grow’.

September is a key month in Estonian politics, because a range of important budgetary issues will be discussed very soon. Therefore, all major political parties in the country, including those that are in the Government, will be ‘testing the waters’ on prospective policy- making (as well as abolitions, changes, and adjustments to the existing policies) to see whether or not some of the new proposals can resonate with the electoral wishes. It did not come as a huge surprise when Mart Helme, the EKRE leader and the country’s Minster of the Interior, ‘kicked the process off’ by stating that “he […] ordered an inquiry into the lifting of visa-free entry into Estonia for Ukrainian citizens”4. In 2017, the EU, while conducting the so-called ‘Visa Liberalisation Dialogue’ with Ukraine, decided to “transfer Ukraine to the list of third countries whose nationals are exempt from visa requirement”5. The call was made effective from 11 June 2017, and from that date a Ukrainian citizen, who would hold a biometric passport and want to travel to the Schengen-bound area for a short-stay, could do that without having a visa. Speaking on the issue, Minister Helme made the following statement:

In Estonia, because of its location and history, migration from the east has become a bigger and bigger issue, especially from Ukraine. […] We have to take a serious look at the situation, and we have taken legal advice. […] This trojan horse works, among other things, on Russia’s behalf, since those who have been coming here are not Ukrainians so much as Russians from eastern Ukraine, or Russians from Russia, or simply ‘homo sovieticus’.6

If numbers are to speak, an Enterprise Estonia-supported portal reports that “[t]he Ukrainian community is the second-biggest ethnic minority in Estonia […] [with] more than 22,000 Ukrainians living and working here, making up approximately 1.7% of the Estonian population”7. In addition, the same source makes another claim that “many Estonian IT companies have been recently hiring Ukrainian specialists, resulting in a growing Ukrainian IT community in Tallinn”8. At the same time, this information is misleading at best, because ‘Ukrainian community in Estonia’, as a notion, can be defined using different methodology. Depending on a chosen approach, a sought-after number can differ significantly from one another. For example, Statistics Estonia declares that, on 1 January 2019, the ‘Population by

4 ‘Interior minister to launch inquiry into Ukrainians migrating to Estonia’ in ERR. 11 September 2019. Available from [https://news.err.ee/979094/interior-minister-to-launch-inquiry-into-ukrainians-migrating-to-estonia’]. 5 ‘Visa liberalisation with Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia’ in the European Commission. Available from [https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/international-affairs/eastern-partnership/visa- liberalisation-moldova-ukraine-and-georgia_en]. 6 Mart Helme in ‘Interior minister to launch inquiry into Ukrainians migrating to Estonia’. 7 ‘Ukrainian community in Estonia’ in workinestonia.com. Available from [https://www.workinestonia.com/living-in-estonia/ukrainian-community-in-estonia/]. 8 ‘Ukrainian community in Estonia’.

2 ethnic nationality table’ had 23,665 people in the box related to ‘Ukrainians’9. This figure is not much of a difference from what was recorded on 1 January 2015 – in the pre-visa liberalisation times back then, Ukrainian ethnicity was associated with 22,562 people in Estonia10. Objectively, 1,103 people as an increase in less than five years is not a solid justification for the “trojan horse” comment, if such a populism-driven expression can ever have a morally-accepted justification in a stable liberal democracy. Moreover, it is not a secret for Minister Mart Helme that Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a military conflict. However, the actual point of the ministerial statement was not related to the aforementioned Statistics Estonia-provided data – in that particular ‘ethnic’ table, a high number of ‘Ukrainians’ are, in fact, Estonian citizens who have been living in Estonia for quite some time, and only about 4,000 of them11 hold Ukrainian citizenship.

Most definitely, Minister Mart Helme was not happy with the fact that “15,524 short-term employment and temporary residence permits were granted to Ukrainian citizens temporarily staying in Estonia, with or without a visa, in 2018, and 2,565 were granted residence permits”12. Presumably, if those permits were legally granted by the Republic of Estonia, a Member State of the EU, then there was an economic need in an additional labour force to arrive to the country from elsewhere. Undeniably, due to the visa-liberalisation framework, there will always be a certain number of people who would prefer abusing the system in order to remain in the EU illegally. But, statistically, the overwhelming majority of people usually respect the law. On the Ukrainian theme, Minister Mart Helme has, however, a specific point:

Visitors from Ukraine are not our people. They are economic migrants who want to get better conditions in Estonia and higher earnings than is possible in Ukraine. For Estonia, these people are a problem; they take jobs from local residents and are willing to work for less. Thus, they create pressure on local earnings in general. […] We need to be able to choose for ourselves and control the numbers we allow here, under what conditions, and for how long. This is definitely a focus that cannot be overlooked13.

9 ‘Population by ethnic nationality, 1 January, years’ in Statistics Estonia. 6 June 2019. Available from [https://www.stat.ee/34278]. 10 ‘Population by ethnic nationality, 1 January, years’. 11 ‘Ukrainians in Estonia. Ukrainian community in the Republic of Estonia’ in the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Estonia. Available from [https://estonia.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-ee/ukrainians-in-ee]. 12 ‘Interior minister to launch inquiry into Ukrainians migrating to Estonia’. 13 Helme.

In the context of the above cited comments, there was a definite need to hear the Estonian Government’s official position. Not much was immediately expressed by the Prime Minister, but Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa), the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, was quick enough to extensively comment on the matter:

The unilateral abolition of visa-free travel for Ukrainian citizens by the Republic of Estonia is neither reasonable nor legally possible. […] Apart from Ukraine’s fulfilment of objective conditions, this decision was clearly a political move by the European Union and its withdrawal is in no way in line with our interest in supporting Ukraine’s integration into the European Union. […] In order to work, Ukrainian citizens need a work visa, and most Ukrainians who come here will come here on the basis of visas, not visa-free. Abuse of visa-related issued must be dealt with by police authorities and it is necessary to get into the house once.14

Considering the above, it can be argued that there is a noticeable disagreement between members of the current Estonian governmental coalition on a major EU-wide policy in regards of the entity’s immediate neighbourhood. Interestingly enough, Marko Mihkelson (the Reform Party, in opposition), who is currently the Vice-Chairman of the Riigikogu’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, sarcastically noted that “[e]ven Putin has not called Ukraine a trojan horse for Europe […, but] [n]ow a member of the Estonian government is doing it”15. On this background, it was announced that Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected President of Ukraine, will be visiting Estonia this coming October16. A truly intriguing political situation to say the least…

14 Urmas Reinsalu in ‘Foreign minister: Not possible to lift visa-free rules for Ukrainians’. ERR. 11 September 2019. Available from [https://news.err.ee/979119/foreign-minister-not-possible-to-lift-visa-free-rules-for- ukrainians]. 15 Marko Mihkelson in ‘Reform MP: Rescinding Ukraine visa waiver is radical foreign policy step’. ERR. 11 September 2019. Available from [https://news.err.ee/979216/reform-mp-rescinding-ukraine-visa-waiver-is- radical-foreign-policy-step]. 16 ‘В октябре президент Украины Владимир Зеленский посетит Эстонию с официальным визитом’ in ERR. 13 September 2019. Available from [https://rus.err.ee/980381/v-oktjabre-prezident-ukrainy-vladimir-zelenskij- posetit-jestoniju-s-oficialnym-vizitom].