TALLINN - The Estonian population ministry has unveiled a plan to launch a 1.1 million kroon (70,000 euro) advertising campaign urging residents to apply for citizenship.
The two-part campaign will both encourage people living in Estonia to go through the naturalization process and highlight that the country is "tolerant to other nationalities."
"We will deliberately give two different messages,as we very well know that integration is bilateral," Olga Slok, the population minister's press adviser,told the Baltic News Service.
There were more than 116,000 stateless persons inEstonia at the beginning of this year, and the populationminister's office has set itself the aim of reducing theirnumber to under 112,000 by the end of 2009 and to less than107,000 by the end of 2012.
