Name: Is ESTONIA the European SILICON VALLEY? - VisualPolitik EN
Uploaded: 2021-04-03T17:15:30.000Z
Duration: 11 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - B1

Estonia might be a country that you've only hear about on the Eurovision Song Contest...

Adverbs of manner

If you are one of the few people who actually watch that.

Adverbs of degree

But the reality is Estonia is a pioneering country in many fields, some might even call

Companies like Skype and TransferWise were both created here.

This is surprising given that just 30 years ago, this country was part of the Soviet Union.

In fact, geographically Estonia's situation is far from ideal.

Their weather there is pretty terrible and they have fewer than three hours of daylight

Plus, they have a never-ending demographic crisis that seems almost impossible to resolve.

Unlike most countries, the female population of Estonia is significantly higher than the

This means, people find it harder to find a partner and have children.

This is why every year Estonia maintains a course of population reduction.

And yet, despite all of this, Estonia is still the most technologically modern country in

In fact, it is the only nation where the access to internet is recognized in the Constitution.

But what makes Estonia get into our Countries Hall of Fame is the so-called E-RESIDENCY.

This means: any person, no matter where are they from, can fill a form and become a virtual

Today, we are going to explain you this, but before we get into that, let´s look back

TITLE: THE FIRST VICTIMS OF VLADIMIR PUTIN

In 1991, Estonia got its independence from the Soviet Union.

Yes, other countries like Belarus or Ukraine did at the same time.

But in those cases, their new democratically elected governments had a strong influence

Their first democratic Prime Minister, Mart Laar, formed a cabinet with an average age

These where young people with new ideas and who had no debts with the Soviet old guard.

This is how Estonia opened their economy to the international market.

They adopted a capitalist system and a fairly unique political system that would become

Actually, this is the word that defines Estonia better than any other: MINIMALISM.

Even their flag is a simplistic representation of their traditional landscape.

Even their taxation follows a so-called “flat rate tax system.”

Well, here everyone pays the same percentage of tax, no matter how much do they earn.

In this case, their income tax is just 20%.

With these policies, it´s easy to understand why they quickly attracted foreign investments,

especially from Finland and other Scandinavian countries.

Nonetheless, this was not enough to grow at the rate they wanted.

At the beginning of the 90s, just half of the population had phones in their homes.

Further the infrastructure, built during the Soviet era, were far from acceptable.

And as you can imagine, this is not a great set up for a country wanting economic recovery.

Since they had no money to build physical roads, they decided to invest what they had

in virtual roads: the country's telecommunications.

And, 15 years later, Estonia was the first country on Earth to implement an electronic

But hold on a second because all these reforms didn´t come for free.

During these 15 years of forward progress, the Russian minority that used to rule over

This is why in 2007, the Kremlin, with Putin in office, decided to act.

This is how the first cyber attack in history was organized.

And yes, a cyber attack on a government that relied heavily on a digital infrastructure

During the attack, Estonia lost their administration - which meant even the hospitals couldn't

This is why, since that day, NATO has based their cyber-security headquarters in Tallinn,

But that was not the end of Estonia's problems…

Two years later, in 2009, the financial crisis struck the Estonian economy hard, which was

especially exposed because of it's significant foreign investment.

All of a sudden, the government had no money.

Plus, this was the time when they were supposed to adopt the Euro as their currency.

So, even if they wanted to switch, they didn't have the money to set up a new currency in

So they had two options: cut spending or raise taxes dramatically.

Unlike other countries like Spain, Estonia took the first option.

In a matter of months the Government fired over 10,000 workers, which was a third of

Politicians lowered their salaries and froze all state investments, including many construction

All of these budget cuts caused the Estonian GDP to fall 14% that year.

To make a comparison, the US, at their worst moment, saw their GDP fall just 8%.

Nonetheless, after going through a terrible 2009, Estonia started to recover immediately.

Since they didn't raise taxes and their business policies were quite flexible, many

of those who lost their jobs started their own companies.

Now, let´s take a look at their unemployment chart…

Between 2008 and 2009, Estonia went from a 4% unemployment rate to a 19% rate.

At the time, this was the highest rate in all of Europe, even bigger than Spain or Greece.

However, in just two years, they cut this figure in half.

Today, a person who works in Tallinn is making more money than most people in Southern Europe.

In summary: Estonia is a model for other countries to follow.

And now we're going to have a look to see what they key aspects were that made this

Estonia pioneered the creation of the “digital ID card.”

Now many other countries are copying this model… but it's never been quite as successful

The reason is that the ID card is actually useful.

For instance, during the elections, any citizen can take this card, connect it to a computer

This is particularly convenient if you are on holiday or if you live in another country.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Is ESTONIA the European SILICON VALLEY? - VisualPolitik EN

subscribe

access

matter

crisis