EC will not support building Estonian National Museum

TALLINN- The European Commission announced that it will not support building the new complex of the Estonian National Museum (ENM) near Tartu as the size of the future museum building raises questions, National Broadcasting reports.

The Commission’s spokesperson Karolina Kottova said that they had sent a new letter to Estonian authorities about the essence and size of the museum. ENM would have been the biggest museum, building which would have been supported by the EU. The exhibition space would have been ten times of what it is in the current buildings and the maintenance costs of it would have been nearly 80,000 euros a year which cannot be covered from ticket sales, the European Commission pointed out. The Commission also says that the wish of ENM to become a regional centre raises issues due to its far off location. The location is in Raadi, outside the city of Tartu. Also the Commission did not see enough of the Estonian state support behind such a big project.

The Commission has not issued an official document of refusal as usually a member state withdraws an unsuitable project after the Commission issues its evaluation.

The Estonian National Museum was founded in 1909. The museum’s mission is the collecting, preservation, research and presentation of the culture and history of the Estonian people, other Finno-Ugric nations, and minorities in Estonia. The Estonian National Museum is currently located in various buildings in the centre of Tartu. When after years of planning and design contests, the construction procurement for it was declared last year, the presumed calculation cost was estimated in the range of 32.15-37.8 million euros.