[haku]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

God, finally somebody in the EU said something!

The EU did react from the very beginning, Angela Merkel, acting as EU president, called Vladimir Putin several times, and the German ambassador in Moscow (accompanied by the Portuguese ambassador if i'm not mistaken), acting as EU ambassador, handed a letter of formal prostest to the Kremlin on 3 May, they were received by a Russian minister who expressed his "bewilderment" at the EU's attitude. You have to imagine a "bewildered" Russian minister venting his theatrical outrage to a couple of bored European ambassadors mostly thinking "Wtf is his problem, who gives a shit if a freaking statue is moved?", except in more diplomatic terms.

The reactions from the EU and its member states were publicly relatively restrained (except for the Polish twins who vented quite a lot on TV, but Poland is planning to remove all Soviet memorials this summer so they are bracing themselves) but you can be sure that the reactions through diplomatic channels were quite firm.
One sign of that is the fact that Vladimir Putin congratulated the new French president 2 days after everybody else, in diplomatic language that's a sign of great discontent.

More generally, the problem is that the EU is not a real federation yet and that the EU has no legal mandate in foreign affairs, it's a member states reserve at the moment, and the EU must be sure to have the backing of all member states before saying anything in that area.
When the EU has a president and a foreign affairs minister, such conflicts with a third party will be dealt with much more strongly and quickly. Going toward more European integration and a truly federal structure will be the most efficient way for EU member sates to resist to bullying tactics from third parties.

Originally Posted by Sunrider

I don't know if you've ever been in Estonia, but it's quite shocking to see how the government of an EU memberstate treats 30% of its population as second class citizens.

It's a thorny issue for Estonia, the Russian minority makes no secret that it sees Estonia pretty much as a Russian oblast, it's difficult for a country to give citizenship to people who think the country should not exist. And we have to remember that those Russians were brought there by the USSR in a process of forced russification of the area and the locals, it's difficult for Russians to claim that they are an oppressed minority when they had themselves no regards for the Estonian minority in the USSR to begin with.
Forced russification is a process that has been going on from the Baltic to the Pacific since the old days of the Russian empire, the Komi republic is a good example of that, 92% Komi in 1926, 60% Russian now, a slow but effective process, the same thing was happening in Estonia until it broke away from the USSR.

It's no secret that many Russian politicians would want Russia to go back to its historical imperial borders, the LDPR (with which our own Tatu girls are good friends) even has it written in its platform, and that Russian minorities in neighboring countries are used as an excuse for a potential territorial expansion. Even though the ruling party United Russia doesn't go as far as the LDPR in terms of territorial claims, it does favor a return to the former USSR borders (with possibly Finland as an added bonus), and it is particularly irritated with the loss of the Baltic states since it has caused the Kaliningrad oblast to become detached from Russia proper, the Baltic states joining the EU has even reinforced that seperation since the free movements of goods and people within the EU implies a reinforced border around non-EU Kaliningrad.
The Baltic states and Kaliningrad have become to Russia what the Danzig corridor and East Prussia was to Germany between the 2 Word Wars (the Allied should have never agreed to Kaliningrad becoming Russian, the land should have been given to Poland or Lithuania, but not Russia, big mistake).