Ambassador: Estonia's Integration Policy a Success (2)

Published: 17.11.2011 15:51

Photo: Postimees/Scanpix

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Newly-appointed ambassador to Ukraine Lauri Lepik has called Estonia's integration policy a success that can serve as a model for other countries.

Lepik, who presented his credentials to President Viktor Yanukovich on November 16, conveyed his views on integration in an interview with the Kiev daily Den.

"I can confidently say that our experience with integration of the population of Estonia - Estonians, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews - is a large success," he said.

"The conditions we have created allow everyone who works and lives in Estonia to obtain citizenship and participate in local life. Non-citizens may vote in local elections and work in their fields in any organization."

Lepik's statements fly in the face of several minority rights groups and international organizations that have noted Estonia's lack of progress on integrating its large ethnic Russian community with its majority Estonian population.  

In an assessment of the integration policies of 31 European and North American nations published this summer by the Brussels-based non-profit Migration Policy Group, Estonia placed 19th for creating equal opportunities for its residents.

In July, Estonia's Praxis think tank called the government's integration policies "superficial," saying they were far too focused on Estonian language proficiency, neglecting other areas of integration. Regarding Russian-curriculum upper secondary schools, which were mandated to begin a shift to conducting 60 percent of their instruction in the Estonian language this fall, the government had not communicated enough with the parents and had failed to incorporate them into the transition, the study concluded.

According to Lepik, a significant part of the linguistic minority still supports the language transition in Russian-curriculum schools. "After all, its essence lies in the fact that most people, for whom Russian is the native tongue, send their children to Estonian-language kindergartens. There are critics of this policy, but they are in the minority. Of course, constructive criticism is always helpful, because we can then adjust our policy to improve it," he said.


Steve Roman

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Comments (2)

  • avatar

    knut_albers

    17.11.2011 16:53

    "Of course, constructive criticism is always helpful, because we can then adjust our policy to improve it,(...)" Sounds fair. Speaking about improvements in the educational transition process. Current curriculums simply would have to be phased out, and for the new comers the kindergartens and schools should have been merged, where the new conditions apply from the very beginning. My suggestion has simple reasons: If you start to change the conditions in the midst of enrollments, it will be harder for them to keep up with the material, because they have to spend more time on to catch up with the new criteria. In particular, because the state budget does not allow special classes for these students and the state also do not have enough qualified personnel for this that would be freely available on the market. This brings me to my second reason of the advantage of such a transition regime: There would have been more time to train the staff properly with Estonian language, what obviously has been, for whatever reasons, slumbered away. That would change the language in the classroom in a more comprehensive way. I am afraid that the current conditions set by the government, fasten the transistion to education in Estonian language, resulting in lower overall quaility of education, including low quality Estonian education for the reasons mentioned above. Thank you for your time.

  • avatar

    Karu87

    17.11.2011 17:19

    The fact that there aren't any big cultural differences between Estonians and most of the minorities makes integration more simple. There is a language barrier, but that will fade away in the next 15-25 years. There are things that could be done better. Like giving out citizenship without a big mess on the birth. Its not a big problem now either but there a ways to make it simpler. And we should also consider relaxing the language rules to the immigrants from the soviet union who want to have citizenship. Most of the are elderly and will never leave Estonia. They should be able to take part of the national elections, not only the local ones.