Estonian Economy Minister: Finland an important factor in Estonian success
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Emigration to Finland brings labour shortage to Estonian construction industry
Juhan Parts, Estonia’s Minister of Economy and Communications, looks pleased as he sits at the new Estonia Centre which opened recently in Helsinki.
Parts would like to see more places like this – centres were Estonia can present itself, and where Estonian expatriates can reinforce their roots.
The vast majority of Estonians who live abroad live in Finland. Numbering about 30,000 the Estonians have overtaken Russians as the largest immigrant community in Finland.
Nobody knows exactly how many more Estonians are working in Finland temporarily, especially in the construction industry.
Parts notes that many Estonian families are in a situation in which the father of the family spends most of his time working in Finland, coming back home once a week, or once a month.
“Construction companies [in Estonia] are complaining that it is hard to find competent labour. But the answer is simple. They need to pay better wages”, he says. There are also local shortages of doctors and nurses.
Some populist politicians are said to have made paralells between emigration to Finland and Stalin's mass deportations of Estonians to Siberia .
Parts emphasises that Estonia has benefitted greatly from the trend. “In the Estonian success story, Finland is one of the most important components.”
In addition to revenue from wages earned in Finland, Estonia has received cultural influences and investments. Parts believes that the emigration trend will gradually decline.
“Twenty years ago the salary of a teacher in Finland was 22 times that of a teacher in Estonia. Now it is just 2.5 times more and the difference is declining.”
The Rail Baltica project for a fast rail connection from Tallinn to Poland is also seen as a boost to international contacts.
The newspaper Postimees reports that the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania agreed on Thursday on the establishment of a joint venture to promote the project.
“If everything goes according to plan construction will begin in 2018 and the line will be ready in 2023.”
The estimated costs of the Rail Baltica project are about EUR 2.5 billion. After EU subsidies, Estonia’s share of the cost would be EUR 500 million.
There has been talk in Finland about a railway tunnel beneath the Gulf of Finland from Tallinn to Helsinki as an extension of Rail Baltica. However, the current feeling is that the cost of such a project would be prohibitive.
HS
