PSCRP-BESA Reports No 128 (April 26, 2025)
On 26 March 2025, the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) voted on changing the country’s constitution in the part defining who is eligible to vote in local (municipal, in the case of cities) elections. Namely, Article 156 of Estonia’s Constitution was changed, and all citizens of non-EU countries can no longer vote at the local level. (Now, before the amendment is enforced, this Article is formulated as follows: “In elections to local authority councils, the right to vote is held, under conditions established by law, by persons who reside permanently in the territory of the local authority and have attained at least sixteen years of age.”) Those Estonian residents who do not hold any other citizenship (“non-citizens of Estonia”) might vote for the last time at the local elections in 2025, and after that, they will be equal in their rights (or their absence) to other non-EU citizens residing in the country. An alternative amendment, proposed by the right-wing Estonian Conservative People’s Party, to strip non-citizens of voting rights in 2025 immediately was rejected by the parliamentary majority. The voting took place in two steps: first, the MPs approved the very procedure of the urgent change of the country’s Constitution, and then they voted on the two alternative amendments (differing regarding the non-citizens’ voting rights). Only the parliamentary fraction of the Center Party (Keskerakond) voted against the very change of the Constitution; the initial bill was drafted by the center-liberal Reform Party, Social Democrats, and the left-liberal “Estonia 200.”
On the surface, this measure does not look extraordinary: even across the European Union, the practices differ regarding the municipal suffrage of non-EU residents and the Union’s citizens. Most EU countries do not grant non-EU foreigners any voting rights, including at the local level; the non-EU residents might vote, if meeting certain residential criteria, in the local elections only in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia, Denmark, Lithuania, Finland, and Sweden. In other countries, nobody (or almost nobody) protests against the “discrimination” of non-EU citizens, and their non-participation in local politics is considered something natural. However, if we take into account the context of the Estonian sociodemographic situation, it becomes clear why the issue of municipal suffrage turned into one of the most discussed Estonian news topics in recent months.
The Russophone minority currently comprises 21.6 percent of Estonia’s population; 20 percent of the local Russians have the so-called “aliens’ passports” (välismaalase pass). (“Non-citizens” constitute roughly 62,000 persons, which makes up 4.5 percent of the population, although not all of them are Russian or Russophone; close to 80,000 of the country’s residents hold Russia’s citizenship). This means that they are permanent residents of Estonia who cannot acquire Estonian citizenship by birthright and have not undergone the naturalization procedure; at the same time, they do not hold any other citizenship, which effectively turns this populational group into de jure apatrides. Despite this status, the differences in political and other rights with the full-fledged Estonian citizens are not that drastic – or they have not been before 26 March. For instance, in neighboring Latvia, the similar category of non-citizens (nepilsoņi) has never enjoyed any voting rights at all. Nevertheless, in Estonia there is a certain (although not that huge as often portrayed by Russian state media) portion of people who, being (for a certain, long enough period) tied to the country and the community they live in, do not have the country’s (and the EU’s) citizenship and would feel disenfranchised because of the potential inability to elect future local authorities. The issue thus acquires a strong political air and rises in significance not only in domestic but also in international political processes.
The effects and problems of the decision might be grouped in the following way.
First of all, if the declared goal was to diminish the potential malicious influence of Russia and Belarus on Estonia’s domestic affairs, the decision to exclude the citizens of all other non-EU countries (like, for instance, Moldova, Ukraine, Canada, or Norway) from local suffrage does not look justified. Also, it is not clear how the disenfranchisement of the local “non-citizens” (who do not have any other citizenship, including the passports of Russia or Belarus) might, at least de jure, diminish foreign influence – if one does not assume that these people are “pro-Russian” only because they are Russophone, regardless of their actual citizenship (or lack thereof). No less important is the fact that Estonian Russophone non-citizens have largely voted, in recent years, for either the Center Party, which has, apart from some most radical MPs, abandoned pro-Russian rhetoric of any kind in recent years, or for the party “KOOS,” which does not seem to have the potential of bridging the electoral threshold. Thus, the danger seems to be smaller than it is presented by the media and the ruling coalition.
Secondly, the measure, especially in the format it was presented to the general public, leaves no doubts regarding its main target, i.e., the local Russophone population. The share of those “Russians” that live in Estonia with Russian/Belarusian passports or with the grey “alien’s” passports is rather small, and the potential positive effect for the country’s security does not seem impressive. The political parties that supported the initiative might hope that disenfranchisement of non-EU citizens at the local level would, if not boost their popularity, then at least reduce the electoral gains of the Center Party. This may be true, but only in the local elections – indeed, the earlier loss of power by the Center Party in Tallinn, the country’s capital, might be further consolidated. However, those Russophone residents who have acquired Estonian citizenship and are eligible to vote nationally might, on the contrary, express their greater support, as a form of protest voting, for Centrists, the only parliamentary fraction that voted against the constitutional change. Or they may even lend more support to the extra-parliamentary and more radical, pro-Russian populist party “KOOS.” The above-mentioned parties, presenting themselves as the voices of the local Russians, have, for sure, already taken the opportunity to criticize the Estonian establishment for the estrangement of the Russophones. This critique is echoed by the Russian state-controlled media, read by many local Russians and negatively preoccupied with the Baltic countries’ domestic politics, which were quick to label the constitutional change as “Russophobic.” The effect on the national political landscape might thus prove to be contrary to what the legislators initially expected.
For Israel, this experience demonstrates once more the importance of developing a stable and coherent ethnic politics aimed at integration and non-estrangement of minorities, and the eternal necessity to strike a balance between the urge for securitization and the need for national coherence, resilience, and political stability.