As a reminder, non-citizens – holders of gray passports are former citizens of the USSR and their children who have not obtained citizenship of Estonia (or any other country).
According to the Minister of the Interior Igor Taro, today, if both parents are “gray passport holders” and have lived in Estonia for more than five years, their child receives citizenship as a naturalized citizen by exception.
“In the future, there will be no requirement that both parents have resided in Estonia for a long time,” Delfi.ee quoted the minister as saying. – The child will be able to obtain citizenship already by one parent. The second parent may be stateless and reside in Estonia legally”.
The law should come into force on January 1, 2027.
This rule is already in force in Latvia. Children of non-citizens became automatically entitled to Latvian citizenship already from January 1, 2020.
At the beginning of 2026, more than 160 thousand non-citizens lived in Latvia – this is 8.7% of all its residents.
