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It is always an honour, especially for a small country like Estonia, when a leading international news outlets recognize the hard work Estonian organizations have put into developing all of the possibilities that most Estonians take for granted. Here are just a few examples of what international news outlets have written about Estonia, e-Estonia, and e-residency over the past couple of months.
“The Tiny European Country That Became A Global Leader In Digital Government”
Mark Stones writes in his article that by 2002, the Estonian government had built a free Wi-Fi network covering a high percentage of its populated areas. Five years later, it introduced e-voting. In 2012, Estonia established a massive fiber-optic cable infrastructure to deliver ultra-high-speed data connections.
He adds that just as impressive, if not more so, is the country’s digital development of governmental systems via an environment called X-Road, which serves as the backbone of its digital services.
In addition to this, he highlights that last year, 170,000 people voted digitally in a parliamentary election and handwritten signatures are necessary only to get married and buy real estate.
Read the article in full here
“Internet access is now a basic human right: part 2 – Chips with Everything tech podcast”
In episode two of four of The Guardian’s podcast series, they focus on “one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, Estonia, and how it rapidly transformed itself from a Soviet state to digital utopia.” To explore the matter further, they speak to Estonia’s foreign minister, Marina Kaljurand, and Skype’s first employee and co-founder of TransferWise, Taavet Hinrikus.
Listen to the podcast here
“Estonia e-residency allows anyone to setup and run a business in the EU”
Nextbigfuture highlights two instances where Estonian e-residency has made the operations of foreign companies both easier and cheaper.
As one of the examples, Nextbigfuture describes a Serbian high-end car services company that had been paying credit-card processing fees of 7 percent. By setting up in Estonia, they can settle credit-card transactions through PayPal subsidiary Braintree for 2.9 percent and there is no tax on corporate profits as long as they remain invested in the business. Since getting his e-residency and moving the company to Estonia, profits are up 20 percent, Tasic says. Annual revenue is around $2 million.
Read the full-length article here
