Vox Populi

Õnne Pillak

head of the Reform Party group in the Riigikogu

The grey passport is not so much intended as a travel document, but rather as an identity document for stateless persons. If a person is not a citizen of any country but lives legally in Estonia, holds a residence permit, or for example, has fled a dictatorship, renounced their citizenship and applied for and received asylum in Estonia, they will obtain a grey passport. Historically, in Estonia, so-called grey passports are mostly held by former citizens of the Soviet Union who have not acquired the citizenship of either Estonia or any other country. The vast majority of Estonian grey passport holders qualify for Estonian citizenship if they pass a language exam and take the oath of citizenship. However, they must apply for this; citizenship cannot simply be "granted" to them.
In 1992, the alienation of a large part of society at the local level posed a significantly greater threat than the potential influence of hostile foreign countries on Estonia's decision-making processes through their citizens. While approximately 70,000 people of undetermined citizenship currently live in Estonia, in 1992, their number was 480,000. In contrast, there were only a few thousand citizens of the Russian Federation in Estonia in 1992. Today, their share has increased by dozens of times, whereas the percentage of stateless persons has decreased from 35 percent to just 5 percent. The situation has changed dramatically.
The constitutional task of the Estonian state is to protect Estonian statehood. Based on this, the majority of the Riigikogu has set as a common goal the withdrawal of the right to vote in local elections from citizens of the aggressor states – Russia and Belarus. It is a goal that unites and must be realized. Personally, I am in favor of depriving also holders of grey passports of the right to vote, but the Social Democrats have so far agreed only to a compromise favoring grey passport holders. I call also on all other political parties to come together to the center ground so that the constitutional amendment can be made as a matter of urgency and the voting rights of citizens of the aggressor states can be restricted.

Timur Sagitov

member of the board of the Greens party

The number of holders of grey passports is on a downward trend. Their holders either die, acquire citizenship of the Republic of Estonia by naturalization, or take the citizenship of another country. Children can obtain the citizenship of the Republic of Estonia under a simplified procedure. There are currently about 62,000 stateless persons living in Estonia, which is half the number for 2007. But it's still too big.
The reasons why people delay naturalization are different:
1. Legal – lack of legal income, criminal convictions, or a record of service as an active-duty member of a foreign armed force;
2. Educational – lack of proficiency in the official language or finding the exam for citizenship to be too difficult;
3. Ideological – the person feels the issuance of a grey passport to be an insult by the state and wants to get a passport of the Republic of Estonia without having to sit exams;
4. Travel convenience – visa-free movement within the Schengen area and Russia;
5. Convenience for young people – some will naturalize only after the age of 28, when they are past the conscription age.
However, I would recommend that holders of grey passports who consider Estonia their home become citizens. This will open up new opportunities for travel, employment in the public sector, participating in all elections, including standing for election, obtaining a weapons license, etc. As the so-called grey passport is issued by the Estonian state and there is no need to renounce another citizenship, the process is much faster and everything can be done at the office of the Police and Border Guard Board.

Ants Frosch

member of the Riigikogu, deputy chairman of Estonian Nationalists and Conservatives

The alien's passport, also known as the "grey passport" due to its design, is a travel document issued by the Republic of Estonia. It is issued to an alien who has a valid Estonian residence permit or right of residence and it is proven that they do not have a travel document issued by another country and cannot obtain one. After the restoration of the Republic of Estonia, stateless residents in Estonia numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and their border crossing and travel opportunities needed to be addressed. The dynamics of the number of grey passport holders over time reflects the choices of the population and serves as a metric of a kind. There has been a consistent decrease in the number of people needing a grey passport. According to current regulations, we have essentially implemented the zero option for citizenship for minors. Unfortunately, the number of citizens of the Russian Federation has also increased.
By giving stateless persons the convenience of travel to both the West and the East without a visa, it is kind of a reincarnation of the Nansen passport.
How today's situation fits in with our perspective is another matter altogether, but unfortunately we have to admit that Estonia's integration policy has been powerless.
There is absolutely no need to change the rules for acquiring citizenship through naturalization. The acquisition of citizenship by naturalization is in place and working. Language proficiency, the Constitution and Citizenship Act examination and loyalty are the conditions to be stressed here. On several occasions, one of today's parliamentary parties has, for political reasons, attempted to flirt with the zero option for citizenship, fortunately to no avail. This issue must be closed once and for all. I confess that I am a little surprised by the substance matter of this poll.

Lavly Perling

chair of The Right

Instead of dealing with grey passports, we must concentrate on the real issue now. From the perspective of Estonia's national security, reducing the risks associated with influence activities, and the self-assertion of the state, the priority today is to limit the right of individuals who are citizens of a country that was declared a terrorist regime by the Riigikogu last fall to participate in local elections in 2025. This can be done under a mandate arising from the Constitution, which requires amending the Municipal Council Election Act.
Grey passports are a phenomenon that is diminishing over time, and the debate about whether and to what extent this status should be terminated can continue after addressing the core issue, by taking a broader look at Estonia's citizenship policy as a whole.
The right to vote of stateless persons is therefore not a topical issue. They, unlike citizens of the Russian Federation, do not have a duty to serve in the armed forces of the terrorist regime. The number of stateless persons is steadily decreasing, having shrunk by about 30 percent over the past ten years, from 87,833 to 62,216. These are mostly elderly people, all doors are open for them to enter Estonian citizenship, which means that we have no reason to start perpetuating their right to vote in the Constitution or, on the contrary, to start excluding it through the Constitution.
The fact that this particular question seems to be taking center stage in the debate highlights the current parliament's inability to understand the real problem – this is true equally for both the coalition and the opposition. The current debate, where the coalition knows that their bill will not receive the necessary 81 votes in the Riigikogu, and the opposition knows that coalition MPs will not support their bill either, is directly harmful to society, lulling the public into believing that the problem is being addressed.
As things stand, we must not rely solely on amending the Constitution, but must also pursue other options in parallel. One such option is the bill initiated by Leo Kunnas and The Right, which seeks to restrict the voting rights of citizens of the Russian Federation as a terrorist regime through amendments to the Municipal Council Election Act. This requires 51 votes, making our plan much easier to implement than the plan to amend the Constitution.

Riina Solman

member of the Riigikogu (Isamaa)

Stateless persons broadly fall into three categories. The smallest category is persons who have acquired citizenship by naturalization and have subsequently lost it – for example, when it was revealed that they cheated in the language test. The second, and in today's challenging geopolitical situation a potentially growing group, are people whose "state" is not recognized by Estonia – such as Palestine or Abkhazia or some other such problematic emigration region.
The largest group are those whom we are used to calling "grey passports" – former USSR citizens who remained here after the restoration of Estonia's independence and who have not bothered to obtain Estonian citizenship for 30+ years. The reasons have been mostly related to convenience – so that they can travel to Russia under a simplified procedure or not have to undergo military service in Estonia. In any case, the vast majority of them have not gone through the integration process, and public opinion polls show their weak connection with the Estonian state and views that are more inclined towards Moscow than in any other group in society.
The political opponents of Isamaa, especially Social Democrats, try to argue that it is a problem predominantly related to elderly people and therefore self-solving. However, this argument doesn't hold: if it really is believed that these people will at some point naturally disappear from our country, then it is all the more bizarre to enshrine their right to vote in the Constitution. Although I consider this to be ideologically wrong in itself, it is also very bad practice from a legal point of view.

Vladimir Svet

minister of infrastructure (SDE)

A few years ago, under the leadership of the Social Democrats, the law was changed so that essentially no new new people are joining the ranks of stateless persons – children become Estonian citizens either automatically or through a simplified procedure. The alien's passport was created in a different context – in 1992, Russian armed forces were in Estonia, and only bold visionaries dreamed of NATO and EU membership. The format of undetermined citizenship has received much criticism, but decisions made more than 30 years ago must be evaluated in a historical perspective. It can be said that this was a success story for Estonia: at that time, there were nearly half a million stateless persons in Estonia – the vast majority of whom eventually became Estonian citizens. Why didn't some become citizens? There are 62,216 reasons – that's exactly how many stateless persons there are in Estonia, who also decided not to become citizens of Russia! Some are unable to learn the language, others are too old or afraid of exams.
In the past, visa-free travel to Russia was crucial for some. After the start of the full-scale war, this argument fell away – far fewer people now visit Russia than before. The right to vote in local elections strengthens people's connection with Estonia: they can have a say in local life. If we deprive them of this opportunity, we will push these people away. If Estonia does not care, then our eastern neighbor will "care." It is statesmanlike to preserve the right to vote for stateless persons, which helps to ensure that these people do not fall into the Russian sphere of influence. It is worth making an effort to ensure that at least some of them also become Estonian citizens over time.

Peeter Tali

chairman of the Riigikogu European Union affairs committee (Estonia 200)

The Estonian state and people have made enormous efforts to integrate the migrants brought to Estonia during the Soviet occupation into our society and the free world more broadly. The Kremlin very quickly began to fight to ensure that as many as possible of the immigrants in Estonia would take Russian citizenship, as the Kremlin's long-term plan has been to protect the interests of Russian citizens around the world if it is geopolitically advantageous for the implementation of imperialist ambitions, even in Alaska if necessary.
One of Estonia's temporary solutions and countermeasures was the introduction of the status of persons of undetermined citizenship and the so-called grey Nansen passport. We did this in the hope that our non-Estonian residents would not choose Russian citizenship, but would perceive the advantages of a free democratic society and a market economy and acquire Estonian citizenship over the years.
The Kremlin, on its part, created the possibility for them to travel to Russia without a visa and without paying a high visa fee. It has become possible to travel freely in Europe with the same passport, so in essence, the grey passport is a very convenient and powerful travel document.
After years of heated debates, both behind closed doors and in public, Estonia stopped reproducing stateless persons, as security experts already then saw through the Kremlin's plan to use the grey passport as a trump card to divide our society. Where previously, stateless persons had to submit an application for their child born in Estonia to acquire Estonian citizenship, after the legislative amendment, all children of parents of undetermined citizenship born in Estonia receive Estonian citizenship by default. It is, of course, possible under law to apply for a grey passport for such a child, an Estonian citizen, with a lot of paperwork, but the good news is that there are fewer than 60 children under the age of 15 with undetermined citizenship.
The number of people with grey passports in the population has decreased by 30,000 over the past ten years and they now make up just 4.5 percent of the population. There is no good reason why they should not become Estonian citizens, aside from the convenience of travel. They have become so accustomed to a good life that they would neither have the skills nor the ability to live in a corrupt and authoritarian country.
When I asked high school students at Pärnu Koidula Gymnasium in a civics class whether people with grey passports should have the right to vote in Estonia, I received a clear answer: they are very welcome to contribute to our society's governance, apply for citizenship, and then also elect the parliament, not just local government councils.