In the Baltics, the stateless who can’t vote in the EU election

The European Parliament’s campaign slogan for the EU election is “Use your vote. Or others will decide for you.” But there are half a million stateless people in the EU who can’t vote even if they want to.

More than half of that number live in the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, according to UNHCR data.

In Estonia, 61,000 people have so-called undetermined citizenship, about 4.5 percent of the population. In Latvia, 175,000 people have noncitizen status, according to the country’s Central Statistics Board, making up 9 percent of the population.

The vast majority migrated for work during the Soviet era. When Latvia and Estonia gained independence in 1991, citizens who settled in either of the two countries between 1940-1991 (the Soviet occupation period) were not automatically granted citizenship. Russia, however, granted citizenship to any former USSR citizens upon request.

In Latvia, noncitizens have no voting rights at all. In Estonia, they can vote at the local level, although the government recently put forward a bill that would strip them of those rights too. According to Latvia’s Foreign Ministry website, noncitizens “cannot be regarded as stateless” as they enjoy the same rights as Latvian citizens, with the exception of “the right to vote and to work in the civil service or occupy posts directly related to the national security.”

“In Estonia, statelessness is a personal choice of those people. Estonia is very supportive of noncitizens becoming citizens and we are happy to see them participating in the European Union Parliament elections as soon as they become Estonian citizens,” said Siiri Leskov, an adviser to Estonia’s Interior Ministry.

The other Baltic state — Lithuania — automatically granted Lithuanian citizenship to everyone in the country at the time of independence, and as such does not have any noncitizens.

While the governments of Latvia and Estonia claim that the respective minorities are not stateless, the people belonging to these groups that POLITICO spoke to beg to differ. Most were afraid to speak publicly due to what one person described as “possible repercussions from the authorities.”

In 2017, the European Commission concluded that Latvia’s and Estonia’s decision not to extend the right to vote in European elections to noncitizens does not constitute discrimination.

Andrej Duguškin, 41, a member of the social-democratic party Saskaņa who works in the restaurant business, said nothing has changed since Latvia joined the EU. Duguškin was born in Latvia to noncitizen parents (children born to stateless parents automatically gained Latvian citizenship only in 2020).

“Of course I would vote if I could. I would even like to try to go to a municipality and become an MP. Do something for my home city. But I can’t. I am not allowed,” he said.

There are half a million stateless people in the EU who can’t vote even if they want to. |  Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images 

He said that failure to do anything about the situation was a “big minus for Europe and the European Parliament,” adding that “they are turning a blind eye to what politicians here are doing.”

Alma (not her real name), 45, said she tries to maintain a low profile to keep her daughter, who is studying in Russia and visits her in Latvia regularly, safe.

“Last time I voted was 30 years ago. I am not that interested in politics … the EU is so far away. What I know is that none of them [politicians] ever tried to help us,” she said.

Tensions rise after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Estonia and Latvia have clamped down on their Russian-speaking minorities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, making moves such as removing Soviet monuments, making elderly citizens take a language test to avoid expulsion, and banning Russian content on public broadcasters.

According to Latvian MEP Nils Ušakovs, himself a former noncitizen, these moves increased tensions between the Latvian-speaking majority and the Russian-speaking minority.

“That the situation for Russian speakers — not only noncitizens — is a bit worse [after the start of the war] would be a very diplomatic way of putting it,” said Ušakovs, who went through the process of obtaining citizenship — known as naturalization — in 1999.

While many of the noncitizens speak Russian, the group is diverse and contains people of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian backgrounds and others. What connects them is isolation.

“A lot of people would just label us as Russian, which is not accurate,” said Eduards (not his real name), a noncitizen born in Latvia who works with others in the same situation to improve their rights. “And it’s actually extremely dangerous, because if Russia agrees that we are Russian, then you have a more serious problem.”

Russia has in the past used the tactic of issuing passports to ethnic Russians living in neighboring countries as a pretext for military intervention, including in Ukraine or Georgia. Having a large number of people with Russian passports in a neighboring country allows the Kremlin to claim that military action is needed to protect its citizens. Moscow granted visa-free travel to Latvian and Estonian noncitizens in 2016.

Voting concerns

According to political scientist Māris Andžāns, from the Center for Geopolitical Studies Riga, one of the reasons not to grant automatic citizenship and voting rights to noncitizens is to minimize the number of people voting for pro-Russian parties.

“To put it bluntly, if it wasn’t for the status of noncitizens, Latvia might have been part of Russia now … if all people living in Latvia in the beginning of the 90s were granted citizenship … I am quite confident that Latvia would have some sort of pro-Russian government now,” he said.

According to Andžāns, noncitizenship is “a matter of national security, and also a matter of national pride. Because it’s so easy to receive the citizenship.”

Naturalization requires knowledge of the language and the country’s history.  But many noncitizens refuse to go through the process as a matter of principle.

“I am a local citizen, this is my country, I was born here. I don’t have any other native land. Why should I go and prove something to someone?” said Duguškin, who works in the restaurant business, adding that he feels Latvian and European.

Eduards, who is an ethnic Ukrainian, said noncitizens are often made scapegoats for the existence of the Soviet Union.

“I think my family is a good example of how that just doesn’t make sense. On my mother’s side, my relatives were declared enemies of the people by the Soviet Union. On my father’s side, my relatives barely survived Holodomor [in 1932-33, also known as the Ukrainian Famine],” he said, adding that his family in 1991 voted “for” Latvia’s independence from the Soviet Union.

According to Eduards, the voices of stateless people are not heard, and many of them have given up on democracy and justice.

 “Because the last time many of these people voted was when they voted for the independence of a country that made them stateless,” he said.

The proportion of noncitizens in both countries is naturally decreasing, as most of them are elderly (and some did go through the naturalization process). The number has dropped from about 300,000 in 2011 to 175,000 in the current year in Latvia, and from 86,000 in 2011 to 66,000 in 2021 in Estonia.

“It’s a complete shame to think that this is the way to go, to resolve the problem by waiting for all of us to die,” said Eduards.