By the end of 2025 people may only have a permanent address in one country - 12,000 persons currently have an address in both Finland and Estonia

Together with the Estonian Ministry of the Interior, the Digital and Population Data Services Agency has determined that 12,000 persons have a permanent address registered in both Finland and Estonia. As of December 2025, this will no longer be possible as information on persons moving between the two countries will be exchanged automatically from that time forward. In the future, a permanent address can only be registered in one country.

The Finnish and Estonian authorities will go through the list of persons with overlapping addresses in early 2026 and send a request for clarification to these persons. These people will be asked to indicate the country in which they actually live on a permanent basis.

The matter can be resolved even if there is no response to the clarification request. If a person’s own thoughts on their place of residence cannot be established, their place of residence will remain in the country in which it was last updated. The permanent address registered in the other country will be marked as terminated.

This will also mean that, as a rule, people will only be able to receive residence-based benefits from one country.

“We have now carried out a preliminary comparison of the data in the Finnish and Estonian population registers. We found that a significant number of people were registered as residents in both countries. This indicates that it is necessary to verify and correct the data. This will require a relatively large amount of work for which we are well prepared in both countries,” says Director General Timo Salovaara from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency.

In the future, the exchange of population data will also be extended to other personal data, such as changes in the name and marital status of Estonian and Finnish citizens and information on the birth of a child.

What is this about?

Finland and Estonia concluded a treaty on the smoother exchange of information between their population registers in September 2022, and it entered into force on 1 May 2024. In its first phase, which began on 15 April 2025, the exchange of information concerns data on deaths. Starting in December 2025, information on moves from one country to another will also be transferred automatically. At the same time, the authorities will also investigate all earlier cases. This will ensure that the address data of people who move between Finland and Estonia will be kept up to date in the population registers of both countries.

Enquiries

Director General Timo Salovaara, Digital and Population Data Services Agency, +358 50 344 3111, [email protected]