The Presidential Roundtable on National Minorities met today in Tallinn to discuss the work of various existing state programmes for the integration of non-Estonians into Estonian society; and the compliance of Estonia with the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

The first point was introduced by Mr. Tanel Mätlik, programme coordinator for the Non-Estonians Integration Foundation. Mätlik described the Foundation’s goals and initiated projects. Out of the 6 million Estonian kroons (USD 440,000) allocated to the Foundation from the 1998 state budget, 4.4 million went toward supporting a total 76 different projects submitted to the Foundation by various grassroots NGOs and associations, in all nearly 300 projects were submitted. Project areas included education, Estonian language training, the media, and regional development. Mätlik also discussed the Foundation’s role in implementing two foreign donor supported projects, namely the United Nations Development Programme’s and the Nordic countries’ support programme for the Estonian state integration policy, as well as the European Union-PHARE Estonian language training programme.

Among the questions subsequently asked by members of the Roundtable, it was felt that the Foundation had not yet done enough to inform the general public about the terms for its open competitions as well as its evaluation criteria. At the same time, members noted that the Foundation is one of the first institutions to be created in Estonia, which is aimed at dealing directly with minority integration.

The second agenda point involved discussion of a draft set of comments prepared by a Roundtable working group on Estonia’s compliance with the Framework Convention. The comments will be forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the drafting of an official state report, which Estonia will be submitting to the Council of Europe. The working group noted 15 different points in the Convention, to which it suggested attention should be paid in the state report. Among these were the definition of national minorities in existing Estonian legislation, problems involved with implementing the Law on Cultural Autonomy, state support for non-Estonian-language education in Estonia (both Russian- and other minority-language education), and the participation of minorities in decision-making on the state level.

The Presidential Roundtable is a consultative body, which brings together representatives from different minority cultural associations, political parties and Russian community organizations.

The working group’s draft was approved in principle by the Roundtable, although because several members submitted additional comments, it was dccided to hand these to the working group, which will compile the final version by the beginning of February. The next session of the Roundtable will be on February 19.


Press Service of the Office of the President
Kadriorg, January 22, 1999

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