TALLINN – The Estonian parliament declined on Oct. 17 to stop ratification of the border treaty with Russia and revoke signatures under this document.
The motion was submitted by the opposition Conservative People’s Party.
Nine parliamentarians supported the motion, and 63 voted against it. The motion failed to pass the first reading and was removed from the parliament’s further agenda.
The Conservatives said in their motion that “Russia has not taken a single step towards ratification but has repeatedly accused Estonia of creating an unfriendly atmosphere.”
In the Conservatives’ opinion, the ratification of the border treaty with Russia would call the Tartu Peace Treaty into question and legalize “Russia’s ongoing occupation of a part of Estonian territory and refusal to reimburse [Estonia] for those lands.”
“The decision not to ratify this treaty will give an opportunity for negotiations with Russia on the basis of the ongoing validity of the Tartu Peace Treaty,” the Conservatives said.
However, a majority of parliament members sided with the Foreign Affairs Commission, which favored further work on border documents.
Former Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signed the treaties on the state border and the delimitation of waters in the Gulf of Finland and Narva Bay in May 2005. The treaties legitimized the post-war administrative border, which was drawn east of the pre-war borderline. However, the Estonian parliament supplemented the ratification bill with a preamble declaring the validity of the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty, which said Russia recognized the independent state of Estonia and delimitated the pre-war border.
Given that Russia views the Tartu Peace Treaty exclusively as a historical document without any legal force whatsoever, it saw the Estonian parliament’s move as an attempt to reserve the right for future territorial claims and revoked the signatures under the treaties.
Paet and Lavrov signed new treaties in Moscow on Feb. 18, 2014. Two articles were added to declare the absence of mutual territorial claims and to apply the treaties exclusively to border issues.
The Estonian parliament completed the first reading of the instrument of ratification on November 25, 2015, and suspended the ratification process until the Russian parliament took the relevant steps.
