2024 temporary residence permit quota still hundreds short of being filled
The Estonian temporary residence permits quota for 2024 was still nearly 300 short of being fulfilled as of the start of this month, the interior ministry has said.
The permits in question are those set aside in the annual migration quota, set by the Estonian state at a little over 1,300 per year.
The peak years for filling the immigration quota were 2016-2019, when there was no shortage of demand and all available permits were often snapped up in the first couple of months of the year.
In more recent years however, the number of unclaimed permits were in the dozens: 59 last year, and around thirty in the three preceding years.
The Ministry of the Interior has proposed setting the 2025 quota at 1,298, a fall on previous years, though this is due to Estonia's overall population rather than the recent fall in interest.
According to domestic law, the annual immigration quota must not exceed 0.1 percent of Estonia's permanent population.
As of September 1 this year, Estonia's official, permanent population stood at 1,298,064.
This year, the number of available residence permits is particularly high, with 292 still unissued as of September 1, 154 of which are available for general allocation – some permits are designated to individuals working in specific fields, including culture.
The pandemic, the economic downturn and the changed security situation is likely to be behind the bulk of the downturn in recent years, the interior ministry said.
The quota has fallen from 1,322 in 2015, to 1,314 in 2029, and 1,303 last year.
The immigration limit applies to temporary residence permits for work, business, national interest, or foreign agreements.
This figure excludes those residence permits which have been granted in recent years to top specialists working in tech, academia and other key areas, and is also wholly separate from the EU's migrant quota which it distributed among member states starting with the 2015 migration crisis.
The limit also does not apply to seasonal workers.
Other exemptions include on citizens of the other 26 EU member states and several other nations including the U.S., Japan, the U.K., and Switzerland,
Residence permit applications have also been falling. In 2021 and 2022, over 10,000 applications were submitted per year, compared with 4,702 for the first eight months of this year.
While last year 6,382 temporary residence permit applications had been submitted by September 1, applications for work (1,929 applications this year compared with 2,926 in 2023) and business (2023: 100, 2024: 70) permits have dropped this year.
--
Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!
Editor: Andrew Whyte, Marko Tooming