Pikk 61 / 15065 Tallinn / Estonia / +372 612 5008 / [email protected] / www.siseministeerium.ee

Registry code 70000562

Daiga Zandersone

The Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs

22.05.2024 No 10-10/119-1

About the data exchange

Dear Daiga,

We are contacting you concerning the agreement „Agreement between the Government of the

Republic of Estonia and the Government of the Republic of Latvia on the Exchange of Data

from the Population Register “(hereinafter referred to as the Governmental Agreement).

According to the Article 3 (1) of the Governmental Agreement, the competent authority

maintaining the population register of the state of arrival shall deliver the data (includ ing

changes in the data) listed in the Annex to this Agreement, which has been recorded in the

population register within one calendar month regarding the person of interest, to the competent

authority maintaining the population register of the state of departure once a month, but no later

than on the 1 5th day of the next month.

This principle is also in the “Agreement on the exchange of the information registered between

the population registers of the Republic of Latvia and the Republic of Estonia” “(hereina fte r

referred to as the Technical Agreement) that applies the Governmental Agreement. According

to the Technical Agreement’s Article 2.3. for the first time, the Parties shall exchange with the

files that summarise the data specified in the annex to the Governmental Agreement regarding

to all persons of interest registered in the population register of the relevant Party. Subsequently,

the Parties shall exchange with the files that contain changes in the data on the Person of Interest

as set out in the annex to the Governmental Agreement.

Our concern is that we are receiving from Latvia every month all the data about all the people

of interest, not the changes of their data. That means we must manually look through thousands

of lines in Excel to find out which data is new, and which is already sent to us previous ly.

According to our Agreements we must exchange data that has been recorded in the population

register within one calendar month regarding the person of interest. That means the data that has

been recorded in the previous month, for example the file in May should only consist of data

that has been recorded in April, not in January or even before that.

We are kindly asking you to send only the new data, that means the data about the previous

month, not all the data every month about all the people of interest.

2 (2)

In addition to that, we are proposing to hold a meeting in person after the summer. There we

could discuss more in detail how is the data exchange going and maybe give an overview about

the changes in the national legislation and share the future plans with each other. The meeting

could be held either in Estonia or in Latvia, how is more suitable for you. Please let us know, is

this proposal suitable for you and if yes, where this meeting should be held and when.

Yours Sincerely,

Enel Pungas Head of the Population Facts Department

Annika Nõmmik Aydin +372 6125184 [email protected]