Entries from December 2009
Estonia ranks third in the European Union in its proportion of foreign citizens, according to a study published last week by the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat to mark International Migrants Day. Foreign citizens comprise approximately 17% of Estonia’s population, placing Estonia third behind Luxembourg (43%) and Latvia (18%).
At the bottom of the rankings is Romania, with foreign citizens representing just 0.1% of its population.
Who are Estonia’s foreign citizens? The Eurostat study is silent on this question, with a footnote that detailed data on Estonia is unavailable. But some insight can be gained by looking at the data for neighbor Latvia. According to Eurostat, most (89.5%) of Latvia’s foreign citizens are classified as recognized non-citizens, a category defined as:
… [A] person who is neither a citizen of the reporting country nor of any other country, but who has established links to that country which includes some but not all rights and obligations of full citizenship.
One can reasonably assume that a similar proportion of Estonia’s foreign citizens is made up of recognized non-citizens. And just who are these RNCs? According to 2000 census figures, 25.6% of Estonia’s population is ethnically Russian, with another 2.1% Ukrainian and 1.3% Belarusian.
Would you be surprised to learn that the majority of foreign-citizenship leader Luxembourg’s foreign citizens are Portuguese? The complete study is here.
Categories: News · social
Tagged: estonia, estonian foreign languages, estonian russian relations, latvia, luxembourg
The economic crisis has hit Estonia hard. As this blog has noted, Estonia’s economic output declined at an annualized rate of 15.6% in the third quarter, and the country’s unemployment rate, at 14.6%, is a modern record for Estonia and the third highest in Europe. The only Estonian industry showing any growth at all is fisheries, and Estonian construction workers have fled to Finland in search of employment.
Today’s New York Times cites a new Moody’s report that compares a mainly European group of countries on the basis of a newly contrived misery index. This index adds together a country’s unemployment rate and its government budget deficit, calculated as a percentage of its gross domestic product. The resulting total represents the country’s misery index, which
captures the current conundrum for many countries: their economies need stimulus, but their budgets may not be able to afford it.
Estonia scores a misery index of about 18%, placing it between Portugal (less miserable) and France (more miserable) in the league tables. But Estonia is considerably less miserable than the United States and Britain, and far better off than misery leaders Spain, Latvia, and Lithuania (each close to 30%). View the complete tables here.
None of these countries is in great shape, but the figures suggest that the Estonian government has a bit more flexibility to implement economic stimulus measures than do its Baltic neighbors.
Categories: Economic · News
Tagged: baltic economies, estonia, estonian unemployment, misery index
An Estonian soldier was killed yesterday while on foot patrol in Helmand province, marking Estonia’s seventh fatality in the current Afghanistan conflict. Stars and Stripes has the details.
As noted in an earlier post, with 10 percent of its active troops on the ground in Afghanistan, Estonia is the largest per capita contributor to the coalition effort in that country. Helmand province, where the Estonian soldiers are serving, is one of the most volatile regions of the country.
Categories: News
Tagged: afghanistan, estonia, nato
In spite of the economic crisis, Estonia’s government policy-makers have continued to focus, laser-like, on fulfilling the Maastricht criteria for adoption of the euro. Most of the criteria are being met, and the country appears to be on track to become the 17th country to adopt the euro as its official currency.
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. And as a policy goal, euro adoption has many critics because meeting the Maastricht criteria has meant reducing government spending — and therefore the size of the social safety net — just as tens of thousands of Estonians are falling victim to unemployment. But for better or worse, according to a brand new International Monetary Fund publication, euro adoption could happen as early as next June.
Estonia became the first former Soviet republic to dump the ruble and issue its own currency, the kroon, in June 1992. More correctly, the kroon was reissued. The kroon was first introduced by the fledgling Estonian Republic in January 1928, and it remained the country’s legal tender until the Soviet occupation began in 1940. So taking into account both of its iterations, the kroon will have had a 30-year lifespan if current forecasts prove to be accurate.
If you’ve had the pleasure of holding them in your hands, you know that Estonian banknotes are beautifully designed and a pleasure to behold. I provide a fond description of my first encounter with a 500-kroon note in chapter 12 of my book. Here’s an overview of the notes currently in circulation:
For a more detailed perspective, you can click to open images of every version of every denomination note at the website of the Bank of Estonia.
If Estonia does manage to adopt the euro next summer, it will become the first former Soviet republic, and the third formerly Communist country (after Slovenia and Slovakia) to do so.
Categories: Economic · News
Tagged: 1992, estonia, estonian kroon, euro
Growth industry
In my post on Estonia’s third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) report last month, I took the glass-half-full approach and ventured that the numbers suggested the Estonian economy had turned the corner. The revised figures, just released by Statistics Estonia, show that the corner was not as sharp as we thought.
The original numbers had the Estonian economy contracting by 15.3% in the quarter ended September 30th; the revision shows that actual GDP contraction was 15.6%. This still represents an improvement over the second quarter, during which economic output fell 16.1%, but one that is less pronounced than the preliminary numbers suggested.
The official GDP revision also included some eye-popping numbers on the performance of individual components of the Estonian economy. The only industry that grew meaningfully in the third quarter was fishing.
The biggest loser was construction, where economic activity fell by a whopping 32%. No wonder so many Estonian construction workers have gone to Helsinki looking for work.
Categories: Economic · News
Tagged: baltic economies, estonia, estonia q3 gdp, helsinki
The likely overall impact on Estonia of global warming is a bit more nuanced than I suggested in my previous post.
In an interview with the Estonian Free Press, Jaan Saar, Director General of the Estonian Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, listed a few of the most likely positive impacts on Estonia of global climate change: a longer growing season, and the opportunity to grow a wider variety of crops.
But according to Dr. Saar, these benefits would come at a high cost:
“Our forest experts, however, are more worried as warm and wet weather will cause proliferation of forest pests. If model calculations prove to be true, the number of stormy days will increase, and heavy rain falls and spring droughts will occur more frequently ….”
You can read the entire interview here. Check out the official website of the United Nations Climate Change Conference here. And the website of the Estonian Meteorological and Hydrological Institute is here.
Categories: News · Science & technology
Tagged: climate change, estonia
See no warming, hear no warming?
In survey results published today, Estonia came in dead last among 54 countries in the proportion of its population expressing a high level of concern about global climate change. According to the survey of 27,548 respondents in 54 countries, conducted in October 2009, just 10% of Estonians are “very concerned about climate change/global warming.”
The most concerned nations in the survey were those that have recently been devasted by natural disasters attributable to climate change, including the Philippines (78% very concerned about climate change) and Indonesia (66%). Across all 54 countries an average of 37% of the population was very concerned about climate change.
Estonians’ level of indifference was almost matched by its immediate neighbor to the south. Only 12% of Latvians are very concerned about the problem about which some 100 world leaders will be meeting in Copenhagen for two weeks beginning tomorrow. Lithuanians, by contrast, are closer to the global average: 32% of them are very concerned.
Why do Estonians evince such indifference? Are they ignorant of the looming problem? Are they simply expressing a naked self-interest, stemming from the belief (or hope) that human populations in the Baltic Sea region will be among the few to benefit from global warming? Or perhaps Estonians are just reluctant to admit, to a pollster, to being “very concerned” about anything.
The survey was conducted by The Nielsen Company and the Oxford University Institute of Climate Change. Complete results are here.
Categories: News · Science & technology · social
Tagged: climate change, estonia, latvia, lithuania
Estonia ranks third in the European Union in its proportion of foreign citizens, according to a study published last week by the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat to mark International Migrants Day. Foreign citizens comprise approximately 17% of Estonia’s population, placing Estonia third behind Luxembourg (43%) and Latvia (18%).
