A new phase in the automatic exchange of data between Finland and Estonia will take effect on April 15. As a first step, the population registers of the two countries will begin sharing information on deaths. The next step will be to exchange data on changes of residence.
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.
More read: ERR.EE