Swiss-Estonian cooperation programme supports addressing acute challenges in Estonia with 27 million euros

War in Ukraine has caused millions of people to flee their country. Finance Minister Annely Akkermann emphasized that Estonia faces the challenge of integrating the large numbers of refugees into Estonian society "Learning Estonian will be a key factor in the success of our efforts to facilitate their inclusion in our society. Education in Estonian must be accessible to everyone. Since Estonian will play a key role in their integration, we will have to ensure that language learning is accessible to everyone," she said. Akkermann added that in the context of the current energy crisis and war-induced inflation, we must continue to focus on taking action to counter climate change and preserve biodiversity. "In this context, Switzerland and Estonia have a shared interest in addressing the global challenges set out in the multilateral agreement on climate and the Sustainable Development Goals, and Swiss support for succeeding in these joint endeavours is even more important than the provision of funding."

The Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation to the Republic of Estonia Mr. Martin Michelet underlined that signing of the Framework Agreement of the second Swiss Contribution marks another milestone in the mutually beneficial and fruitful partnership between our two countries. “The potential for the Swiss-Estonian cooperation is huge and we can learn a lot from each other. The second Swiss contribution will create new momentum and provide an entry point for many further areas of collaboration,” he said as he highlighted the importance of the mutual dialogue.

19.2 million euros will be allocated for the social inclusion, while biodiversity protection receive 7.2 million euros.

The social inclusion programme will focus on the integration of foreigners, including war refugees from Ukraine, through creation of better opportunities to actively participate in the society. The budget of the programme will be divided between four ministries and will be led by the Ministry of Culture.

The biodiversity programme seeks to contribute to the improvement of management effectiveness for protected areas and preservation of the conservation status of species and habitats through decision-making process that relys on high-quality data, including innovative monitoring solutions. The programme will be managed by the Ministry of the Environment.

The Swiss Confederation has supported the European Union EU13 member states since 2007. For the period of 2022-2029, Switzerland plans to allocate 1.1 billion Swiss francs to the EU13 countries, stretching from Estonia to Cyprus and Malta, and in addition, 200 million francs for integration to selected member states of the EU. The supported areas and the exact content of the programmes in Estonia were agreed during bilateral meetings. For the national co-funding, 5.9 million euros have been planned, the exact amount depends on the measure and may be up to 40%.