“Ethnic Russian status must improve”

Date: 27/02/03

By David Cronin

MOSCOW has issued a thinly veiled warning that its relations with Brussels could deteriorate unless the status of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia improves before the pair join the EU.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has told Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, that concern over discrimination against their kinfolk in the Baltic states impacts on how the Russian public views the Union. "I want to tell you that we wouldn't like these problems with Latvia and Estonia to interfere with the developing Russia-EU partnership," Ivanov wrote, in a letter obtained by European Voice.

"We are very much worried that 520,000 of the permanent residents of Latvia and 170,000 of the permanent residents of Estonia don't have citizenship," he added. "It is difficult to agree that Russian-speaking people, constituting 36% of the population of Latvia and 28% of the population of Estonia in the future will not have the opportunity to address municipal authorities in their native language, even in places where they constitute the majority of the population."

"There is a reasonable question: is the European Union going to conserve this situation or take measures to solve it? We would like to know whether the status of these people is going to be changed before they join the EU, whether their social and economic rights will be equal to the rights of citizens and whether non-citizens in Latvia will have voting rights in municipal elections like permanent residents in Estonia and Lithuania." He complains that Riga's requirement that election candidates pass a test to prove their mastery of Latvian runs counter to the European Convention on Human Rights.

"From our point of view, all real friends of these countries should be alarmed by the fact that there is no sign of the integration proclaimed by the governments of these countries," he added.

But Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori said there is ample evidence the Baltic states are ensuring better treatment for ethnic Russians as part of their preparations for EU membership.

"There are programmes being launched for the Russian speaking minorities to help them integrate," he explained. "These programmes are well on their way so for us there is no reason to worry."

The Commission's 2002 annual report on membership preparation praises Latvia for taking steps to repeal the election law requiring those standing for office to be proficient in the national language but laments its reduction in financing for a "naturalisation board".

Its report on Estonia states it is "legally possible" for municipalities to make a request to use Russian as an administrative language if more than half of the local population are Russian speakers. But it adds: "So far, this option has not been used."

While Lithuania also has a Russian minority, Ivanov states that this third Baltic state has "no mass problem of people without citizenship" due to "pragmatic measures taken in 1991".

Moscow has issued a thinly veiled warning that its relations with Brussels could deteriorate unless the status of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia improves before the pair join the EU.