I recently applied for an Estonian e-residency. Heres what I did:
The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things.
It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just like a DMV. You take a ticket and wait. The woman behind the counter asks some questions, for your passport, biometrics (photo and finger prints) and 50 euros. You then you wait to hear a response within two weeks.
An annoying part is that you have to show up again in two weeks to pick it up in person. Mine is still waiting for me in Estonia as I've not been back yet and I can't have a friend pick it up for me (it has to be me!).
Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore, which isn't bad as the prices are quite reasonable and the food is good.
You can write to the Estonian Police and Border Guard (teenindus@politsei.ee) and ask for your card to be sent (free of charge) from the police station where you applied to any Estonian embassy. My card was waiting in Tallinn as well since I don't have the time to go there again to collect the card in the next couple of months, so I had it sent to Berlin. Might take two or three weeks for it to arrive.
> Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore,
I'd recommend everyone visit Tallinn.
On a quick walk you can see a medieval castle, renaissance architecture, soviet architecture, and postmodern examples from the sprint west after Baltic independence. It's like a walking through a timeline of European history.
From the linked website, it seems that they expanded applications to overseas embassies a few days ago, so visiting in person might no longer be necessary.
Out of curiosity, what was your motivation for applying? It seems to me that the only obvious use-case for e-residency is to run a company registered in Estonia while living elsewhere.
You are either completely ignorant of the situation in Estonia or deliberately spreading misinformation.
A simple check on Wikipedia would show you that the majority of people in Tallinn are Estonians (with Russians being 37% of Tallinn's population). In the parliament, Keskerakond, which is the only party which could be called pro-Kremlin (and even that is a pretty big stretch), only has 27/101 seats and is not in the government.
Estonia definitely is not Russia, but it is close to Russia.
So close that Estonian policeman Eston Kohver is on trial in Moscow; according to Estonians, he was abducted from Estonia where he was investigating cross-border crime; according to Russia he was spying in Russia. The border is not so clearly marked that outsiders could reliably prove what happened.
This resembles the case of Ukrainian female pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was arrested by Russian forces/proxies in Ukraine and is to go on trial in Moscow.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28249884
Dijit, i'm not being racist here. I'm being political here. Russia having a "claim" on the baltic states is a public secret. Russia trying to subvert and destabilize the baltic states is publically known as well.
Regarding your EU statements, have you read the offical opinion of the EU on Russia ? It's a THREAT to the European Union, especially regarding the baltic member states. However, the documents also note that Russian maffia connected to the Kremlin also has french mayors on their payroll. Please don't underestimate the geopolitical aspect of this topic. And certainly, don't downplay political arguments as "racism", because that's not what this is about.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin was a "real and present danger" to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and NATO was getting ready to repel any aggression, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said." [0]
"Michael Fallon, the British defense secretary, warned that there is a real and present danger that Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch a campaign of undercover attacks to destabilize the Baltic states, in an interview given to the Daily Telegraph. Estonian politicians said that there is a reason to be vigilant, but asked to avoid hysteria." [1]
While there is no imminent threat of attack, the Russian antagonism towards Baltic states has been very very evident to everybody since the Bronze Warrior clashes.
"According to historian Alexander Daniel, the Bronze Soldier has symbolic value to Estonia's Russians, symbolising not only Soviet victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, but also their claim to rights in Estonia.[18] Most Estonians considered the Bronze Soldier a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression following World War II.[19]" [2]
Seeing how Russian proxies and provocateurs make propaganda, a claim about Russian attempts to destabilize Baltic states is not bullshit at all.
You mean "some mass-media claims people in Baltics disagree with that".
I don't really want to interfere with all that information war of yours, but as a Baltic citizen I feel almost offended by generalizations like that. Most people I know (including myself) would strongly claim this is bullshit, and have ironically-scornful attitude towards journalists and politicians spreading all that hysteria you are referring to as "the sources". Of course here are people, who feel otherwise, but I have ironically-scornful attitude towards them as well.
There are at least enough Estonians who agree to elect a president who clearly does see a potential Russian threat.
Of course there are Baltic citizens who are not worried by Russia. There are hundreds of thousands of Baltic citizens who are ethnic Russians and do not want to be anything else, after all. And most people they know will be similar to themselves of course, because people on both sides of this ethnic divide live in ethnic bubbles. (Yes, again a generalization that does not apply to each and every person.)
But I would claim that a majority of Baltic citizens, particularly people of ethnically Baltic origin, are worried about Russia (and ethnic Russian minorities are not). At least that's what the election results look like.
What I'm gonna say is pretty harsh, but, you see, for a long time (almost as long, as I remember myself at all) I have a feeling that election results don't matter. Not because "majority makes a wrong choice", no. There's just no choice. Either you go in politics yourself or you say "fuck them" and try to make living being affected by all these guys on TV as less as possible. No difference what they say. What they will do when elected is of no use anyway. Where I live (Latvia) I remember 1 somewhat useful president and 0 useful premier ministers. For me they are just like weather or something: they are just there, I don't really pray God to protect me from bad weather, I build a house that will.
In fact, I've seen politicians who are making their image as pro-russian and ultra-anti-russian perfectly hanging out "after work" together, so I don't believe in their play a tiniest bit. Nor do all the rational people I know, of both russian and latvian origin. It's kinda obvious that this theater is oriented towards not-so-educated aggressive minorities in order to gather votes. Normal people just don't care. In fact, we don't care so much that jokes about "wish these effing russians would leave Latvia already!" are perfectly fine amongst our russian friends (which actually surprised me at first, because some 15 years ago people were a bit more radical here). I'm just tired of all this "latvian/russian" thing, I don't really understand what "nationality" or "origin" is anyways. The only "international matter"-thing that bothers me where I live is NATO-soldiers playing war on one of our polygons: you cannot imagine how much noise these bastards make!
Of course I don't really know how things are in Estonia as I don't live there all the time, but impression I've got from visiting and communicating with people who do live there isn't really much worse.
I'm not too worried about identity theft due to simply having an e-residency. That seems like quite a stretch. Russians in Estonia have an interesting recent history but as far as I understand it, a lot can't even vote in national or EU elections. If anything Russian residents hold too little power over the country they call home.
Also according to Estonia's own population estimates, Tallinn is made up predominantly of Estonians (53%) but there is a large Russian minority (38%). Of course you could argue that they aren't registered as residents but from personal experience the stats seem quite accurate.
There is basically two political parties in Estonia. A russian one, and a Estonian one.
The capital, where most people live is politically dominated by Russians.
I just invited some Estonian friends that campaign against the ID-Card and E-voting system to respond in this thread :)
That's not true at all. Keskerakond does hold a lot of power (in Tallinn), but you're overdramatizing it way too much.
The reason why you're saying that there's "two political parties" is because Estonians' votes are spread out between 3-5 parties, whereas Russians only vote for 1 (Keskerakond). So yes, in the end, there's two main big parties (which is the same for a lot of countries), but saying that there's "basically 2 parties" is completely ignorant. Estonians' views are spread out, whereas Russians feel like they have to vote for Keskerakond to have at least some political power. Also to note, a lot of elderly Estonians also vote for Keskerakond (my grandparents for example), so Keskerakond is not just a Russian party.
From personal experience, the US has been fingerprinting non-US nationals at the airports for a decade now. So NSA has had such a database for a significant time. However, I still doubt they have figured out to hack the iPhone using said database. But this is just my personal opinion...
The first thing to know is that you have to physically be there to apply. I went to Estonia and applied at the local police station. I know that sounds weird but thats how you do it. In Estonia, this is where you go to renew driver's licenses and a lot of governmental things.
It was relatively painless. I didn't need to make an appointment. It's just like a DMV. You take a ticket and wait. The woman behind the counter asks some questions, for your passport, biometrics (photo and finger prints) and 50 euros. You then you wait to hear a response within two weeks.
An annoying part is that you have to show up again in two weeks to pick it up in person. Mine is still waiting for me in Estonia as I've not been back yet and I can't have a friend pick it up for me (it has to be me!).
Be prepared to spend two weeks in Tallinn, therefore, which isn't bad as the prices are quite reasonable and the food is good.