Estonia

La estrella europea en educación

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En educación, Estonia obtuvo el tercer mejor desempeño para los alumnos de quince años de todos los países en el informe PISA 2022, solo por detrás de China y Singapur. Otros países europeos entre los diez mejores son Finlandia, Polonia e Irlanda. La ministra estonia de Educación, Kristina Kallas, una politóloga liberal, me explicó el pasado 24 de noviembre las claves del éxito escolar de su país en una conversación que resumo a continuación.

El sistema escolar estonio no es muy diferente al de otros países europeos, y la inversión en educación tampoco es excepcional. El nivel preescolar no es obligatorio, pero la mayoría de los niños asisten a él, y tiene una misión educativa y un horario de lunes a viernes.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Saliendo de una pandemia, estamos en un momento en que es natural preguntarse si debemos continuar como antes o cambiar algo. En educación, es un buen momento para reflexionar sobre el concepto de libertad. Estonia nos da un ejemplo de que las cosas se pueden hacer de otra manera.

La tendencia que prevalece hoy en educación en los países occidentales es anteponer los métodos de trabajo y la convivencia al resultado del aprendizaje. Se suele criticar la enseñanza dirigida por el profesor como aburrida y pasiva. Se propone que los alumnos trabajen por proyectos y que descubran ellos mismos lo que van a aprender.…  Seguir leyendo »

I’m the Prime Minister of Estonia. Putin Can’t Think He’s Won This War

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A cualquiera que haya vivido bajo la ocupación soviética, las informaciones que llegan desde Ucrania nos traen de nuevo escenas que pensábamos que no volveríamos a ver. El bombardeo de civiles y la destrucción gratuita de edificios recuerdan las matanzas desencadenadas en el continente europeo por Hitler y Stalin. En Mariúpol, una ciudad portuaria sometida a un despiadado y terrible asedio, los habitantes están siendo presuntamente deportados a lugares remotos de Rusia, donde les aguarda un destino incierto.

eses cuando, en 1949, los soviéticos la deportaron, junto con su madre y su abuela, a Siberia. Mi abuelo fue enviado a un campo de prisioneros siberiano.…  Seguir leyendo »

I’m the Prime Minister of Estonia. Putin Can’t Think He’s Won This War

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To anyone who lived under Soviet occupation, reports from Ukraine replay scenes we thought we would never see again. The bombing of civilians and the wanton destruction of buildings recall the carnage unleashed on the European continent by Hitler and Stalin. In Mariupol, a port city subjected to a brutal, horrifying siege, residents are reportedly being deported to faraway places in Russia where an uncertain fate awaits them.

My family knows what that’s like. My mother was only a 6-month-old baby when, in 1949, the Soviets deported her, together with her mother and grandmother, to Siberia. My grandfather was sent to a Siberian prison camp.…  Seguir leyendo »

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas at a gathering of European Union leaders in Brussels in June. (Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFA/Shutterstock)

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“August is the month to watch”, said Estonia’s 44-year-old prime minister during a recent visit to Washington. The guns of August 1914 announced the beginning of what was called the Great War until an even worse one began nine days after the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of Aug. 23, 1939. However, Kaja Kallas radiates serenity during lunch near Lafayette Square across from the White House.

She does not think Russia’s late-summer military exercises near Estonia, scheduled by the man she calls “the bully next door”, presage aggression. She does, however, think it prudent to consider that Vladimir Putin’s revanchist ambitions might not be confined to Ukraine.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Estonia es uno de los tres países bálticos que forma parte del grupo de naciones más adelantadas en la enseñanza y utilización de tecnologías de la información y comunicación. Según la organización “Freedom House”, es también uno de los países donde la economía, la prensa e Internet gozan de más libertad. ¿Cómo se ha colocado esta pequeña nación de 1,3 millones de habitantes en posición puntera en el campo de las nuevas tecnologías? Este logro se explica por la adopción de una iniciativa de vanguardia en pro de una Estonia digital, que apuesta por la educación innovadora, la empresa virtual y la ciudadanía digital.…  Seguir leyendo »

Estonia is all about digital governance. Brian Yeung, CC BY-SA

EuropaReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías,

Big Brother does “just want to help” – in Estonia, at least. In this small nation of 1.3 million people, citizens have overcome fears of an Orwellian dystopia with ubiquitous surveillance to become a highly digital society.

The government took nearly all its services online in 2003 with the e-Estonia State Portal. The country’s innovative digital governance was not the result of a carefully crafted master plan, it was a pragmatic and cost-efficient response to budget limitations.

It helped that citizens trusted their politicians after Estonia regained independence in 1991. And, in turn, politicians trusted the country’s engineers, who had no commitment to legacy hardware or software systems, to build something new.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Estonian President Toomas Ilves paused when I asked him if the annual Estonia’s Friends meeting he hosts is a copy of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Valdai Club, which gathers Russia experts from around the world every year. “Uhhhhh … no,” Ilves finally said, peering at me through his frameless eyeglasses.

Of course my question was meant to be provocative because Estonia and Russia have taken radically different paths since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Estonia, with a population of 1.3 million, is the smallest of the former Soviet republics; Russia is 100 times more populous. Estonia implemented bold reforms to achieve membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.…  Seguir leyendo »

Figura 1: Arquitectura de X-Road

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Tema[1]: Este ARI analiza el concepto de “embajada de datos” como un nuevo instrumento de la política exterior para asegurar el funcionamiento de los servicios públicos esenciales frente a riesgos cibernéticos.

Resumen: Estonia está considerando la posibilidad de replicar fuera del país las bases de datos informáticas que permiten la prestación de servicios públicos esenciales para mitigar el daño de una posible agresión o pérdida. La progresiva mentalización de las sociedades y gobiernos frente a los riesgos del ciberespacio les está llevando a dotarse de nuevos instrumentos de ciberseguridad y ciberdefensa que hace poco parecían de ciencia ficción. El riesgo –ya factible– que corren las bases de datos públicas en el interior de los países está llevando a reforzar sus infraestructuras de tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones, pero también a pensar en nuevos instrumentos como la replicación de esas bases en el exterior para diversificar los riesgos y potenciar la resiliencia frente a ellos.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Après les modèles suédois et allemand, l'Europe doit-elle adopter le modèle estonien ? Malgré la success story estonienne, la réponse est non. Voici pourquoi.

L'Estonie n'a cessé de surprendre ces dernières années. Tout d'abord, elle a étonné ceux qui, à l'automne 2008, pensaient qu'elle n'avait pas d'autre solution que d'abandonner son currency board (caisse d'émission, en français) pour dévaluer massivement sa monnaie. Or, c'est bien une toute autre solution qu'elle a choisie, puisqu'elle a renforcé son ancrage monétaire en adoptant l'euro le 1er janvier 2011. Elle a surpris aussi en décidant, à l'hiver 2008, de baisser massivement les salaires des fonctionnaires dans l'espoir de créer un "effet de démonstration" au secteur privé, notamment celui exposé à la concurrence internationale.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, spent a couple of days last week reassuring the Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – that fellow Nato members would stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, should they face Georgia-style aggression from close neighbour Russia. His pledge, undoubtedly sincere, was not entirely convincing.

Mullen does not speak for key European states such as France, Germany and Italy, whose leaders have been notably weak-kneed about punishing Moscow for its August incursions into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, led efforts to block a US-backed Nato membership plan for Georgia and Ukraine earlier this year.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Outside the Soviet Union, communist Poland was the strongest member of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet-led alliance that bound eastern Europe between 1955 and 1991. The very name of the treaty underlined Poland's special role in it. Most Poles disliked Russian rule, but many thought that the Soviets at least could defend them and their newly gained western territories against the Germans.

Today a new kind of Warsaw Pact emerges, this time with a strong anti-Russian and pro-US profile. Poland and the three Baltic republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - harmonise their policy with regard to their status as super-ally to the US, their suspicion of Russia and their hidden frustration at "soft" European foreign policy.…  Seguir leyendo »

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From outside, the offices of Skype-- the company best known for its free Internet phone service -- don't look very different from the other Soviet and post-Soviet buildings that make up the nondescript suburbs of the Estonian capital. But inside, the aesthetic influence of Northern California is undeniable. The high-tech, open-plan offices; the "playroom," complete with pool table and sauna; the young, bearded employees; the Dadaesque plastic crocodile hanging from the ceiling; the bluejean-clad spokesman who has been "too busy" to contemplate the fact that eBay, which bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, recently admitted that it paid too much.…  Seguir leyendo »

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And now for a quick quiz: A European country -- a member in good standing of NATO and the European Union -- has recently suffered multiple attacks on its institutions. Can you (a) name the country, (b) describe the attacks and (c) explain what NATO is doing in response?

If you can't, don't worry: NATO itself doesn't quite know what it is doing about the attacks, despite the alliance's treaty, which declares that an armed attack on one of its members is "an attack against them all." The country is Estonia -- a very small, very recent member of NATO; the attacks are taking place in cyberspace; and while the perpetrators aren't exactly unknown, their identities can't be proved either.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Konstantin Kosachev claims that Estonia now permits SS rallies - but plans to pull down memorials to those who died fighting fascism (An insult to our war dead, March 6). This is not true. Different colours can be used to paint history. For Russia the years 1941-45 mean the great patriotic war, in which the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union and were defeated. For Estonia, alongside Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the second world war began two years earlier in August 1939, when Stalin and Hitler divided Europe into spheres of influence. As a result Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lost their independence for 50 years.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The marks of the second world war can be seen all over Europe, in restored buildings, destroyed neighbourhoods, war cemeteries, painful memories and memorials to the millions who died in the war against nazism. In almost all countries the memorials are treated with respect. In Normandy fallen British and German soldiers lie in adjacent cemeteries. Their graves are well kept, so that families may visit their last resting place, and new generations be reminded of the horrors of war.

But in Estonia a new law threatens the very principle of the sanctity of the war dead. The War Graves Protection Act will allow the memorial that stands in the centre of the capital, Tallinn, to be dismantled, and the bodies of unknown soldiers beneath it to be disinterred and reburied elsewhere.…  Seguir leyendo »