Estonia, Legislation

"The Estonian state defends its citizens and defends their right to Estonian citizenship acquired by birth. The Estonian state will never start taking away citizenship acquired by birth from any of its citizens, I refute any doubts to that effect," said Vaher, commenting upon the topic of allowing multiple citizenships that was discussed by the government this week.

"Several states allow their citizens to have citizenship of another state simultaneously since in today's globalised world people often have ties in several states. In Estonia the dissuasion over this topic must be preceded by a thorough analysis so that both important legal aspects and the influence of the change could be taken into account," he said.

Currently the Estonian Constitution states that no one can be deprived of Estonian citizenship acquired by birth, but according to the citizenship law, a person who has acquired the citizenship of some other state too by birth, in addition to the Estonian citizenship, has to choose one citizenship when getting 18 years old.