TALLINN, 19 January 2016 – The National Audit Office is of the opinion that the capability of the state and local governments to accept people who are requesting or have received international protection and to integrate them socially needs significant development. It is also necessary to develop a long-term and systematic policy and action plan concerning people who need international protection, and to guarantee sufficient human and financial resources for its implementation.

The National Audit Office assessed the capability of the state and local governments to perform the 17 obligations that arise primarily from the Act on Granting International Protection to Aliens. The audit revealed that the readiness for the arrival of the 550 beneficiaries of international protection who are to be relocated and resettled on the basis of the migration plan of the European Union is partial and in need of significant development – Estonia would be able to perform three obligations in full and 13 obligations in part, and the capability to perform one of the obligations is poor, as no capacity for regular reviews of the status of beneficiaries of international protection has been developed.

The state is fully ready to pay benefits and pensions to the beneficiaries of protection and local governments can provide them with the same services that other residents receive. The Unemployment Insurance Fund is also ready to help them find jobs. The biggest successes in the state’s preparedness over the last six months are improvements in access to the services of support persons and the initiation of the draft act currently up for the second reading in the Riigikogu which plans to make language training mandatory for beneficiaries of protection. The Police and Border Guard Board is also increasing its capability by training 180 reserve officers from November 2015 to May 2016 who will have the competency to accept international protection requests and conduct primary proceedings, and at least 60 of whom will be prepared to carry out substantive proceedings of international protection.

Guaranteeing the adaptation and integration of refugees is one of the several problems highlighted by the National Audit Office in its report. The state has developed an adaptation programme, but it is voluntary, generally only lasts for a couple of days and may not be understandable for the refugees. No separate integration activities are provided for beneficiaries of protection after the adaptation programme.

The state has prepared an action plan to make up for the shortcomings, but this does not cover several important activities and only deals with 550 people who will be relocated and resettled. However, the number of asylum seekers arriving at the Estonian border is increasing every year and the number of beneficiaries of international protection is also growing. Irrespective of where the person is coming from, the state and local governments must perform their obligations equally well. The audit indicated that local governments expect more support from the state in order to be ready to provide the services that they must provide to beneficiaries of international protection.

For example, local governments expect the Ministry of Education and Research to provide in-service training for preschool and general education teachers to give them the special skills required to solve the problems caused by the cultural characteristics of the refugees as well as the different living conditions they are used to.

The Police and Border Guard expect up to 300 asylum seekers to arrive at the Estonian border, but considering its present capacity, Estonia will not be able to react if this number turns out to be significantly larger. The situation can change very rapidly. For example, the number of asylum seekers in Finland in the second half of 2015 was almost ten times bigger than in the same period in 2014, and the number of refugee centres has also increased considerably.

For a long time, the government has failed to give sufficient attention to the signals that the issue of refugees is becoming increasingly serious in Europe and the issue of sharing the refugee burden will arise. This has led us to a situation where the capability to accept considerably more applicants for and beneficiaries of international protection than before still needs development, and the action plan for dealing with them had to be developed in a hurry. Before the first discussion of the European migration plan in May 2015, Estonia did not have a plan for dealing with a possible situation of dozens more refugees and people with different cultural backgrounds arriving here.

The government’s attitude towards people requiring international protection in previous years has been that Estonia will not participate in their relocation. This also had an impact on the number of refugees designated for Estonia in the initial distribution plan of the European Commission, as the Commission also considered the number of people who had been voluntarily relocated to the country earlier when the initial quotas were developed within the scope of the European migration plan.

The National Audit Office is of the opinion that the Government of the Republic is dealing with the present situation as a one-off, which does not correspond to the changes in global reality and the need to develop a long-term and systematic policy and action plan concerning persons needing international protection. It is also necessary to formulate the positions of Estonia in the migration debate at the European level and a possibly more unified asylum policy.

As a result of the audit, the National Audit Office advised the Government of the Republic to appoint the ministry that will be in charge of developing a long-term policy concerning people needing protection which will set out the tasks and responsibilities of different ministries. Some more specific recommendations were also made to the Minister of Culture, the Minister of Health and Labour, the Minister of Social Protection and the Minister of Education and Research.

231 people requested asylum at the Estonian border in 2015 and Estonia granted international protection to 78 of them. The number of asylum seekers increased by approximately 50% in 2014 and 2015, and the number of people granted protection quadrupled. The total number of people who have requested asylum from Estonia and received it is 846 and 172, respectively, since Estonia joined the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its New York Protocol in 1997.

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During the audit, the National Audit Office evaluated the preparedness of the state and local governments to receive in Estonia beneficiaries of international protection who are to be relocated and resettled according to the migration plan of the European Union. Estonia has stated that it is prepared to receive 550 beneficiaries of international protection. This figure is primarily based on the Act on Granting International Protection to Aliens which stipulated the obligations of the state and local governments to people who are requesting or have been granted international protection.

160,000 people in total will be redistributed according to the European migration plan.

Toomas Mattson
Head of Communication Service, National Audit Office
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• Posted: 1/19/2016 11:00 AM
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