On this day 20 years ago, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the union, taking it from 15 members to 25 in the "big bang" enlargement.

Experts believe Estonia has matured a lot over the last two decades. At the beginning, the steps taken were more reserved, and stereotypes shaped other member states' perceptions.

"In the early years we had to prove ourselves, perhaps more than many others," said Väino Reinart, Estonia's former permanent representative to the European Union (2002-2007).

"If we look back at the history of enlargement, it was not a foregone conclusion that we should be invited to join. It was the result of our own hard work, our own plan, that we had to be better in measurable terms than those countries that were invited. Fortunately, we achieved this. But that kind of view still accompanied us, I would argue, for years. After all, we've all had the experience of traveling abroad somewhere and being from somewhere in the former Soviet Union. This attitude lasted for years," he said.

During the first five years, Brussels' debates were dominated by EU reform, which later became the Lisbon Treaty. At this time Estonia, along with Latvia and Lithuania, were working towards joining the Schengen area (2007) and the Eurozone (2011).

Then came the global financial crisis (2008), the annexation of Crimea (2014), the migration crisis (2015), and Brexit (2015) – all of which completely changed Europe.

"The most difficult was the migration crisis, because the migration crisis had so many different dimensions," said Matti Maasikas, Estonia's former EU permanent representative (2011-2016).

"The Euro crisis was serious. But there was still one issue in the Euro crisis – maintaining the single currency.  In the migration crisis, the different member states had very different interests, and there were also an awful lot of issues to deal with. The migration crisis is also a very good example in this sense: the Greek interest was that no boats should come; the Hungarian interest was that no one should pass through its territory; and the Estonian interest was, unfortunately, that our [migrant] quota should be smaller. And that made it terribly, terribly difficult to solve this migration crisis," he said,

In 2017, Estonia took over the rotating presidency of the European Council. The most important thing was that Estonian officials were able to show they could lead for the first time.

"Our aim was to train a large number of Estonian officials who could cope with the EU system. We certainly achieved that. After the presidency, we had quite some experts who were able to find jobs in the permanent institutions," said Kaja Tael, Estonia's former EU permanent representative (2016-2019).

Between 2018-2020 there was a lull, but then the coronavirus crisis hit, followed two years later by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These crises brought even more changes, said Aivo Orav, Estonia's current representative at the EU.

"What started to happen was that the European Union changed, if not in hours, then in days. If at 10 a.m. in the morning, one or other member state still had a very entrenched position that "oh, we mustn't do that under any circumstances", by 10 p.m. in the evening, it was a done deal," he added.

In the middle of all these crises, Estonia found its voice, stopped standing on the sidelines, and – with Prime Minister Kaja Kallas' proposal to jointly procure ammunition for Ukraine and defense bonds – has even started to set the pace. It is also taking a role in the future enlargement process by training Ukraine's officials

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!