Making Meri the model for Estonia of future

By Edward Lucas

Date: 23/03/06

Lennart Meri, whose funeral is this weekend, was my favourite politician in post-Communist Europe.

He put Estonia back on the map, and also stretched its horizons. It seems smaller and duller without him.

There are plenty of ideas about how to honour his memory, such as re-naming the airport. I like that: as president he once held a press conference in the lavatories there to denounce their lingering Soviet squalor.

But the best tribute would be to live up to his ideals. True, Estonia has an enviable reputation as the hi-tech, low-tax, leanly and cleanly governed poster-child of the post-communist world. There is a stunning 10% growth rate and unemployment is evaporating. Even the birth rate is creeping up. But there is a sad lack of vision, and startling complacency about the long-term. The government's proudest boast is that it is not screwing things up.

It's time for another dose of Meri's ambitious approach. First: reform the scandalously slow, rude, xenophobic and incompetent immigration bureaucracy. If Estonia is going to be a knowledge-based economy, rather than just a cheapish place to assemble mobile phones, it needs all the brains it can get. Instead, it blockades them. The software industry finds it ridiculously difficult to get visas for Asian programmers. My friends at Skype had to go to Stockholm to meet a Pakistani super-geek who lives there; the Estonian authorities wouldn't give him a visa. At a financial seminar in Tallinn recently, three top Russians from Deutsche Bank in Moscow were fuming because Estonia had refused to give them double-entry visas (shockingly, they wanted to do business the next morning in Helsinki and come back to Tallinn in the afternoon). These are just the sort of Russians that Estonia should be impressing, not upsetting.

Estonia is smug about its bureaucracy. But it should be ashamed of this bit.

Secondly, the universities need drastic reform. Estonia spends far too little on research and development - less than 1% of gross domestic product. It should turn the universities of Tallinn and Tartu into English-speaking higher-education hubs, bringing in big brains from outside on competitive salaries for advanced courses and research. That would attract graduate students from all round the world, creating a virtuous circle of talent and money. Mediocre Soviet-era university teachers will hate it - perfect proof why such a change is needed.

No continental European country has yet made a real dent in the global higher-education business. Estonia can and should be the first.

Thirdly, Estonia should start seizing the diplomatic initiative, instead of glumly waiting for Russia's next onslaught. G7 leaders are not looking forward to their trip to St Petersburg this summer, when the G8 summit will give implied support for Vladimir Putin's version of democracy (roughly: sit down, shut up, give me money). Estonia should convene a conference on democracy in post-Communist countries, to be held the day before the summit. That gives the leaders of the real democracies the chance to make a convenient stop-off in Tallinn, simultaneously underlining Estonia's status as ally, while distancing themselves from the next day's goonfest.

Fourth, Estonia's political parties should find a credible figure to be the next president: fluent English, brainy, charming, that sort of thing. (Hint: try looking not among the mediocrities in Tallinn, but farther afield). Re-electing the incumbent Arnold Rüütel, a waffly, Soviet-era bureaucrat, would be a sad let-down.

Statues and plaques for Meri are too easy. The real tribute to the only world-class politician in Estonia's history would be dumping the complacency, timidity, and narrow-mindedness that he loathed.

Commentary feature in which the author suggests key reforms to ensure the present economic boom in Estonia is translated into prosperity in the long term.