8 ms·

Estonia is a place for independent minds

78 points by lelf 8y ago

gringoDan 8y ago
Far and away the best government website I've ever seen. I've heard of Estonian e-residency before, but have never met anyone who actually took advantage of it. I'd be interested to know people's personal experiences with the program.
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  From what I've read it seems to be geared towards people with an online business who wants access to the EU financial markets. I'd love to see them consider granting visas for digital nomads. Most people don't know that it's technically illegal to work on a tourist visa (even remotely). It would be really cool to have a legal way to draw a paycheck from one's home country while exploring the EU. Estonia would benefit from such an arrangement since your tax residency would be Estonian (and thus you'd pay taxes on the salary you draw to the Estonian government) - all without taking away any jobs from EU citizens, and even creating a few. (Ex: paying for hotels/apts, restaurants, evenings out etc)
  - ohples 8y ago
    That would be cool, we could even make our own little neighborhood or something in some city.
- gumby 8y ago
  I have done it and only needed to "visit" Estonia by visiting the embassy. (though I have in fact visited Estonia). You can now make an EU company registered in ee entirely online, even more easily than in the US. I have a Delaware company that is a subsidiary of my EU company and it works great -- I only use the Delaware company to do business with US entities and use the EE one for everything else. While technically a multinational the revenues are not large. I am not a citizen of any EU or North American state. I wish more companies supported the PKI that comes with the E-ID and is similar to the PKI that comes with a German ID card. Right now you can only use it to communicate with a few entities, all listed on the e-residency web site. It's also a bit of a pain that the ID card is the size of a full format SIM card (1FF -- size of a credit card). I hardly use a physical wallet any more and if I could use the identity online via Touch ID or something like that for certain transactions I believe it could be even more useful.
- sccxy 8y ago
  E-residency became much more limited after money laundering scandals. But government is working hard to make it work.
chpmrc 8y ago
I think the winning move would be to establish English as the second official language. Hell, the EU should adopt English as the main language. I believe one of the growth factors of many Eastern and Central European countries is the widespread proficiency in it. I was impressed to find many interviews of Estonian politicians speaking it fluently. (I'm not a native speaker and I've never nor do I currently live in an English speaking country, I just think this is the best and most practical way to start decreasing fragmentation in the EU market).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mjn 8y ago
  > the EU should adopt English as the main language I don't see it happening officially, but this is more and more becoming the case de-facto isn't it? Especially anytime things are done cross-border, English is the default language for a lot of situations, whether business or government or education. I was at a scientific meeting at the European Commission last year, for example, and not a single piece of written information, or spoken talk, was given in a language besides English, and as far as I can tell nobody even considered that a question. Even seems increasingly true in France, which has been politically one of the strongest opponents of de-facto English. French politicians still give their talks at the EU in French on principle, but French companies use a lot of English when doing business with other countries.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    So isn't it time to establish it officially? I have virtually 0 positive feelings towards the current regimes of GB and US, but the language sure seems like a useful thing to standardize on.
    - hombre_fatal 8y ago
      I feel sad for the likely future where you can't go anywhere without seeing English. It's one of the reasons tourist traps feel so grotesque. Easy for me to say when I'm already fluent in it, but one of the most novel, equalizing experiences of travel is being in a new place and not having the crutch of your native language. Of course, also easy for me to say when none of the downsides of EU fragmentation affect me.
thatfrenchguy 8y ago
Ah yes, Estonia, that great place that have 6% of their population who are stateless citizens based on ethnic politics, which strips those people who lived their entire life there of their EU citizen rights as well.
- banach 8y ago
  Could you provide some references?
  - amigoMigo 8y ago
    The comment above you added a bunch.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ericcholis 8y ago
    Anecdotally, I can say that there is a strong distrust of Russians stemming from the various occupation of Baltic states as recently as 1991. [1] [1] Source: My wife's estonian grandparents
    - passing_through 8y ago
      I wouldn't say this is necessarily true in younger generations. I grew up with kids from Russian families in school & kindergarten and the distrust of Russians instilled in you by your parents quickly fades. Older generations are a bit more problematic in this regard. I would say there's a general hate towards older Russians that still can't speak Estonian, even from younger generations. However, I would say Russians are generally disadvantaged in Estonia and that's a big source of issues. In my childhood, younger Russians tended to be poorer and therefore were more involved in various criminal activities. Most of my friends and I were afraid of Russians in our area, as they liked to pick fights and generally mess with you.
- elfakyn 8y ago
  Before anyone asks for sources: https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/03/nationality-ethnicity-estonias-problematic-citizenship-policy/ https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/03/nationality-ethnicity-e... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/many-ethnic-russians-in-estonia-have-gray-passports-live-in-legal-limbo.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/many-ethnic-russ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#Citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#Citizenshi... https://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/3e77f4ab-9a20-4440-b23c-0746c8bce314.pdf https://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/3e77f4ab-9a20-4440-b...
auvi 8y ago
The link is down for me :(
duxup 8y ago
Independent minds, but not websties that can handle HN...
lelf 8y ago
HN hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20190416183148/https://estonia.ee/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190416183148/https://estonia.e...
ravenstine 8y ago
HN effect? Site's not loading for me.
ostap0207 8y ago
https://e-estonia.com/ https://e-estonia.com/ I like this site even more. With such projects as Reporting 3.0, Healthcare 4.0, Industry 4.0 you can see how the country is run as a startup. Estonia also has Startup Visa, which helps non-EU founders to start their startup in Estonia (https://www.startupestonia.ee/visa https://www.startupestonia.ee/visa).

78 points by lelf 8y ago

Far and away the best government website I've ever seen. I've heard of Estonian e-residency before, but have never met anyone who actually took advantage of it. I'd be interested to know people's personal experiences with the program.

dontbenebby 8y ago
From what I've read it seems to be geared towards people with an online business who wants access to the EU financial markets. I'd love to see them consider granting visas for digital nomads. Most people don't know that it's technically illegal to work on a tourist visa (even remotely). It would be really cool to have a legal way to draw a paycheck from one's home country while exploring the EU. Estonia would benefit from such an arrangement since your tax residency would be Estonian (and thus you'd pay taxes on the salary you draw to the Estonian government) - all without taking away any jobs from EU citizens, and even creating a few. (Ex: paying for hotels/apts, restaurants, evenings out etc)
- ohples 8y ago
  That would be cool, we could even make our own little neighborhood or something in some city.
gumby 8y ago
I have done it and only needed to "visit" Estonia by visiting the embassy. (though I have in fact visited Estonia). You can now make an EU company registered in ee entirely online, even more easily than in the US. I have a Delaware company that is a subsidiary of my EU company and it works great -- I only use the Delaware company to do business with US entities and use the EE one for everything else. While technically a multinational the revenues are not large. I am not a citizen of any EU or North American state. I wish more companies supported the PKI that comes with the E-ID and is similar to the PKI that comes with a German ID card. Right now you can only use it to communicate with a few entities, all listed on the e-residency web site. It's also a bit of a pain that the ID card is the size of a full format SIM card (1FF -- size of a credit card). I hardly use a physical wallet any more and if I could use the identity online via Touch ID or something like that for certain transactions I believe it could be even more useful.
sccxy 8y ago
E-residency became much more limited after money laundering scandals. But government is working hard to make it work.

chpmrc 8y ago

I think the winning move would be to establish English as the second official language. Hell, the EU should adopt English as the main language. I believe one of the growth factors of many Eastern and Central European countries is the widespread proficiency in it. I was impressed to find many interviews of Estonian politicians speaking it fluently. (I'm not a native speaker and I've never nor do I currently live in an English speaking country, I just think this is the best and most practical way to start decreasing fragmentation in the EU market).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mjn 8y ago
> the EU should adopt English as the main language I don't see it happening officially, but this is more and more becoming the case de-facto isn't it? Especially anytime things are done cross-border, English is the default language for a lot of situations, whether business or government or education. I was at a scientific meeting at the European Commission last year, for example, and not a single piece of written information, or spoken talk, was given in a language besides English, and as far as I can tell nobody even considered that a question. Even seems increasingly true in France, which has been politically one of the strongest opponents of de-facto English. French politicians still give their talks at the EU in French on principle, but French companies use a lot of English when doing business with other countries.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  So isn't it time to establish it officially? I have virtually 0 positive feelings towards the current regimes of GB and US, but the language sure seems like a useful thing to standardize on.
  - hombre_fatal 8y ago
    I feel sad for the likely future where you can't go anywhere without seeing English. It's one of the reasons tourist traps feel so grotesque. Easy for me to say when I'm already fluent in it, but one of the most novel, equalizing experiences of travel is being in a new place and not having the crutch of your native language. Of course, also easy for me to say when none of the downsides of EU fragmentation affect me.

thatfrenchguy 8y ago

Ah yes, Estonia, that great place that have 6% of their population who are stateless citizens based on ethnic politics, which strips those people who lived their entire life there of their EU citizen rights as well.

banach 8y ago
Could you provide some references?
- amigoMigo 8y ago
  The comment above you added a bunch.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ericcholis 8y ago
  Anecdotally, I can say that there is a strong distrust of Russians stemming from the various occupation of Baltic states as recently as 1991. [1] [1] Source: My wife's estonian grandparents
  - passing_through 8y ago
    I wouldn't say this is necessarily true in younger generations. I grew up with kids from Russian families in school & kindergarten and the distrust of Russians instilled in you by your parents quickly fades. Older generations are a bit more problematic in this regard. I would say there's a general hate towards older Russians that still can't speak Estonian, even from younger generations. However, I would say Russians are generally disadvantaged in Estonia and that's a big source of issues. In my childhood, younger Russians tended to be poorer and therefore were more involved in various criminal activities. Most of my friends and I were afraid of Russians in our area, as they liked to pick fights and generally mess with you.
elfakyn 8y ago
Before anyone asks for sources: https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/03/nationality-ethnicity-estonias-problematic-citizenship-policy/ https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/03/nationality-ethnicity-e... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/many-ethnic-russians-in-estonia-have-gray-passports-live-in-legal-limbo.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/many-ethnic-russ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#Citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#Citizenshi... https://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/3e77f4ab-9a20-4440-b23c-0746c8bce314.pdf https://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/3e77f4ab-9a20-4440-b...

auvi 8y ago

The link is down for me :(

duxup 8y ago

Independent minds, but not websties that can handle HN...

lelf 8y ago

HN hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20190416183148/https://estonia.ee/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190416183148/https://estonia.e...

ravenstine 8y ago

HN effect? Site's not loading for me.

ostap0207 8y ago

https://e-estonia.com/ https://e-estonia.com/ I like this site even more. With such projects as Reporting 3.0, Healthcare 4.0, Industry 4.0 you can see how the country is run as a startup. Estonia also has Startup Visa, which helps non-EU founders to start their startup in Estonia (https://www.startupestonia.ee/visa https://www.startupestonia.ee/visa).