Speeches

President of the Republic at the opening of the Estonian National Museum building, 29 September 2016 in Raadi, Tartu

2016-09-29T16:46:57Z

Fellow Estonians,
Dear Friends,

The Estonian National Museum finally has a home of its own.

With the completion of this building, our debt to those individuals who cared deeply about the preservation of Estonian culture and language and who built a foundation for our independence has been repaid.

More than 100 years ago, vision and bold ideas from people like Jakob Hurt, Oskar Kallas, Villem Reiman and Jaan Tõnisson, and Kristjan Raud and Matthias Johann Eise paved Estonia's way to statehood. Alongside them stand countless legions of Estonians whose efforts to collect artefacts and folklore, much of it on a volunteer basis, helped furnish the museum with content.

The Estonian National Museum's new home is also a debt of gratitude to those who kept Estonia alive in darker, more difficult times and nurtured our hopes. In spite of the vagaries of history and others' dark designs on Estonia, we did not forsake our ideals and our determination.

Address by the President of the Republic of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves at the General Debate of the 71st United Nations General Assembly

2016-09-21T16:43:52Z

Mr. President,
Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I address this assembly today for my tenth and last time. The first time I spoke here I addressed climate change and conflict, refugees, and – what was apparently a first at the General Assembly – cyber attacks as the continuation of policy by other means. So the issues are largely the same, only the urgency we sense has ratcheted up.

President Ilves at the United Nations’ plenary meeting of the Summit for Refugees and Migrants, 19 September 2016

2016-09-19T08:30:46Z

Mr. President,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Estonia welcomes the unique initiative by the Secretary-General of the United Nations that for the very first time allows us, the entire international community, to discuss refugee and migration issues in a single UN-led framework.

Address of President Ilves at the UNICEF High-Level Event "Carry Light for Children", 18 September 2016 in New York City

2016-09-18T15:59:32Z

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Migration is as old as mankind. It will never stop, but we do need to manage it properly. During the last fifteen years, the number of international migrants and refugees worldwide, reaching 244 million in 2015, has grown at faster rate than the world's population.

President Ilves in the Riigikogu: The parliamentary system is the fairest and most reliable

2016-09-12T12:01:01Z

Address of the President of the Republic at the opening of the IV session of the XIII Riigikogu 12 September 2016

Honourable members of the Riigikogu,

In opening your new working year I begin where I left off in this very chamber in April 2009, at the session dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Constituent Assembly – by calling on you to bolster our parliamentarianism every single day, since there can never be such a thing as too much of a sense of responsibility or statesmanship.

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on the 25th anniversary of the restoration of Estonian independence at the President’s Rose Garden in Kadriorg, 20 August 2016

2016-08-20T16:36:12Z

Hello, Estonia.

Today we mark a significant event: we have been free again for a quarter of a century. Free as a people and as a state.

When we look back at the Estonian people's past, we see a prevailing undercurrent in the promotion of our self-awareness and culture.

President of the Republic at Victory Day 23 June 2016 in Võru

2016-06-23T09:32:03Z

Dear members of the Defense League.
Dear allies.
Dear Estonian people.

During the last few years, all of us have probably felt that the security situation surrounding us is very different than before.

President Ilves addressing the Baltic American Freedom Foundation, Riga, 20 June 2016

2016-06-20T19:27:52Z

I am hardly presumptuous enough to echo Dean Acheson claiming "Present at the Creation" but I certainly believe that turning the Baltic American investment fund founded in 1994 into a scholarship or stipend fund five years ago was a great idea. A fund investing in education is probably the best kind of investment you can make. Because the returns are huge, though not always measureable in terms of dollars or euros. Speaking personally I ended up marrying a graduate. So I have personal gratitude for the investment you have made.

President of the Republic at the World Congress of the Finno-Ugric Peoples, June 15, 2016 in Lahti

2016-06-15T13:21:08Z

Dear kinsfolk and friends.

First, I would like to invite you to make a conceptual trip from Lahti across the Gulf of Finland to the southeast corner of Estonia, where the village of Obinitsa with fewer than 150 people, is located directly next to the Russian border. Yet, last year, this old seto village was the cultural capital of millions of Finno-Ugric peoples. This shows how something small can actually be something great.

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves's opening speech at CyCon in Tallinn on June 1, 2016

2016-06-01T10:00:16Z

Ladies and Gentlemen,

When we speak of power in military and security terms in the digital world, we invariably recognize that this world itself began in the military research realm. Be it Alan Turing during the Second World War, working on decrypting Enigma or the origins of the web in DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, we recognize that like with so many technological innovations, the digital world originated in the defense establishment.