More on Estonia

 Well, the stand-off reported in a previous post was broken and Estonian MPs settled on their state auditor and National Museum director as state president after all.

Constitutional quirks notwithstanding, Estonia has been outstandingly successful since joining the EU. Last month, Euronews published an article highlighting her progress.

For starters, the nation has garnered an enviable reputation for mastery of the digital realm and leads the region on many economic and social indicators, flying very much in the face of a common misconception about 'slowness' being a national trait, of which more later.

For Tonis Saarts, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics in School of Governance, Law and Society (SOGOLAS) at Tallinn University, the country’s biggest accomplishments besides the EU and NATO memberships and the dominion of the e-realm is establishing “resilient and well-functioning liberal democratic institutions.” Asked what Estonia did differently than the other two closest Baltic neighbours, Lithuania and Latvia, in executing reforms over the last 30 years, Saarts underlined that Estonia managed to avoid the rise of oligarchs.

It is a sobering thought that this tiny state in the shadow of the Russian federation is less in thrall to oligarchs and to Putin than Johnson-dubbed "global Britain".