Parliament Rejects Amendment on Automatic Citizenship
A proposed amendment that would have given automatic citizenship to the children of Estonia's stateless residents was rejected by Parliament on October 25.
The measure, introduced by the Social Democrats, failed to find support among coalition parties and was defeated in a vote of 47 to 40 with two abstentions.
Under current law, children of stateless residents are given citizenship under an opt-in system, whereby their parents must apply.
Had the amendment passed, all children born in Estonia after February 26, 1992 to stateless residents would automatically be given citizenship unless their parents opted out within six months, according to rus.err.ee.
Two decades after re-independence, approximately 100,000 of the country's residents still do not hold citizenship of any country, a fact that has repeatedly been criticized by international rights organizations.
During his visit in June, the OSCE Commissioner for National Minorities Knut Vollebaek called for Estonia to give passports to all children born in the country saying that "everything possible" must be done to improve a situation where eight percent of the population lacks citizenship.
At the time Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet said that many of the stateless lack incentive to apply for citizenship.
"Russia's decision from a few years ago to waive the visa requirement for stateless people traveling from Estonia to Russia very clearly did a disservice to the process," he said.
Steve Roman