First refugees to arrive in Estonia by end of 2015

The first of the refugees to be relocated under the European Commission's migrant distribution plan are to arrive in Estonia by the end of 2015. 

"Our position is to bring the first four or five refugee families to Estonia by the end of this year,” Deputy Secretary general of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Rait Kuuse, said at a news conference on September 21, 2015.

He explained that specialists from the social affairs and interior ministries will soon travel to Italy, Greece or Hungary to select the families who will be accepted.

Those arriving in Estonia country will immediately be given refugee status and will not be placed in a refugee centre. They will taken directly to the state-allocated housing prepared for them.

Kuuse said the arrival of first refugees could be used for obtaining experience and testing the state's reception systems and mechanisms. 

"This way, experience will increase and we'll be able to use this information to prepare for the future," he said.

"Initial preparedness for the arrival of those 4-5 families is fully in place.”

Ministry officials are unwilling to disclose at this point exactly where the arriving families will be relocated to.