Estonia and Finland have been cooperating on data exchange since 2006, when the two countries began sharing information about citizens who had moved from Finland to Estonia and vice versa.

An agreement signed in 2022 created opportunities to expand this cooperation. Enel Pungas, head of the population operations department at the Ministry of the Interior, said that since both countries use the same X-Road data exchange platform, the technical side of the process is straightforward and updated information becomes instantly available to the other country.

Starting Tuesday, the first type of data to be exchanged will be information on deaths.

"Right now, when someone dies in one of the two countries, their relatives have to physically transport documents to initiate inheritance proceedings and close various accounts. This month, we're launching the first phase of data exchange with death records. This means that if, for example, an Estonian citizen dies in Finland, Finland will automatically inform Estonia, and the data will be available here as well. Relatives will no longer need to carry death certificates or initiate data sharing on their own. For people already going through a difficult time, this is a real help," Pungas explained.

As of early March, just over 55,000 Estonian citizens were living in Finland, while nearly 7,500 Finnish citizens resided in Estonia. The next stage of the renewed agreement will focus on organizing data related to changes of residence, which directly affects about 9,000 Estonians who are considered to have a "dual residence."

"We're aiming to finalize the residence data process by the end of the year, so people won't be listed as living in both countries at once — where one record says they live in Finland and another says they live in Estonia. To prevent this, we've already contacted everyone known to be living in both places simultaneously, and we're doing the same for Finnish citizens. If a person doesn't take any action, we'll start automatically deactivating their residence registration in one of the countries," said the official.

The Ministry of the Interior therefore advises anyone with addresses in both countries to review their records and terminate one of the registrations.

By the end of next year, the ministry hopes to be ready to exchange data related to vital events as well.

"For example, if an Estonian citizen gives birth in Finland, she won't have to bring in any paperwork. The future vision is full-scale data exchange so that no documents related to life events will need to be physically transferred between Estonia and Finland," Pungas said.

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