Ergma Blasts Sloganeering of Expat Program
Speaker of Parliament Ene Ergma attacked "Bring Talent Home," calling it unsuccessful sloganeering, at the Statistical Society's conference on April 20 titled "Will the Estonian population survive?"
"We are citizens of the European Union, we belong to the Schengen zone, we use Europe's single currency. New opportunities have of course become available to Estonia's people," said Ergma. "Both the media and Parliament are worried that people are going elsewhere to work. Is that necessarily bad?"
Bring Talent Home is a 120,000-euro project funded by EU structural funds that puts Estonians who have wandered abroad in touch with local employers, to bring expats back to Estonia. Critics say the plan is unrealistic, that it seeks to replace local talent and that it is hopeless - the official goal is to repatriate 25 people out of tens of thousands. The UN’s latest population report predicts 100,000 fewer Estonians by 2050.
"Estonia undoubtedly has yet to develop a great deal for the economy and the quality of life to be as good as in, for example, the Nordics. But under no condition do we want to go back to those times when the movement of people to leave the borders of the Soviet Union was regulated by a committee for foreign travel," said Ergma at the conference.
The project's website has so far attracted 515 users and 122 employers. In February, with 20,000 visits from 92 countries (beside Estonia, mostly the UK, Germany and the US) to the website, just 152 people had actually applied for a job.
In February, Estonian Air agreed to give potential "talents" a 50 percent discount off a one-way flight to Estonia.
Ott Tammik