Earlier this week Estonia’s Supreme Court decided that the country’s participation in the ESM (the new euro-zone rescue fund) was constitutional, meaning that Estonia will be ready to help in the bailout of, say, Spain.
As to why Estonia (a well-run country that keeps tight control of its finances) should be participating in this nuttiness, look no further than this comment from the country’s prime minister, Andrus Ansip (via Estonian Public Broadcasting):
. . . I fully expected this ruling. I have always believed that our interests are protected through cooperation. In the last 20 years, Estonia’s primary foreign-policy goal has been integration with various European institutions. Our objective is to never again be left alone . . .
Memories of June 1940 still weigh heavily on this Baltic nation. Given the horrors of the half century of totalitarian occupation that followed, it’s never difficult to understand why.