The agency manages EU data, including visa, asylum and crime information. For instance, it enables Estonian police to share information with European colleagues if, say, a car is stolen and taken across Estonian borders.

In two years, it will be decided whether the Schengen system will also be given biometric capabilities, such as fingerprints and DNA.

In 2011, a compromise was made by the European Parliament and EU Council to establish the headquarters of the EU's IT agency in Tallinn.

Estonia and France had been tussling over the rights to host the new agency until they reached a sharing agreement last year. While the organization's main building is located in Tallinn, its data storage centers are housed in Strasbourg and in the small Austrian town of Sankt Johann im Pongau.