Estonia

Who needs a visa is Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 and not Estonian law. What Estonia adds is a national restatement of the measure that most member states leave to the Union text: section 44(2) of the Välismaalaste seadus says in terms that a national released from the visa requirement may stay in the Schengen member states, Estonia included, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. Section 43(1) then lists the eleven things that can make a short stay lawful, from an Estonian visa to another member state's residence permit. Two duties sit on other people rather than on the traveller, and they are lighter than Croatia's: an accommodation establishment must produce the visitor card when the Police and Border Guard Board or the Security Police asks for it, with no deadline running from your arrival, and anyone who gives a foreigner a dwelling or signs a lease with one must check that the stay is lawful. A health insurance contract covering treatment costs is required of a foreigner staying temporarily, and extending a short stay is refused as a rule: section 46(2) allows up to 90 more days only where a circumstance has arisen that the traveller did not know of before arriving.

Estonia had a residence permit for a foreigner with enough legal income, and closed it. Section 309-2(1) of the Välismaalaste seadus says that from 1 July 2012 a temporary residence permit on the ground of sufficient legal income is not granted; subsection 2 lets a permit issued before that date be extended on the conditions for extension on that ground. The ground itself is gone from section 118, the Act's closed list of what a temporary residence permit may be granted for, where point 6 reads only that it was repealed with effect from 1 July 2012. What remains is a whole subdivision - sections 198, 199 and 200 - still printed in the current consolidated text, still describing a permit that may be granted for up to two years at a time and extended by ten, and still forbidding the holder to work in Estonia. Those sections have not been left behind by accident: they govern the extension of permits granted before July 2012, and the ministerial regulation that sets income rates still names section 198 and puts the rate at six times the subsistence limit. A reader who finds sections 198 to 200 and nothing else will conclude Estonia has a passive-income route. It does not.

Section 118 of the Välismaalaste seadus is a closed list of the grounds on which a temporary residence permit may be granted, and retirement is not one of them. The nine live points are a spouse or registered partner, a close relative, study, work, business, taking part in criminal proceedings, a weighty state interest, an international agreement, and permanent settlement in Estonia. The route that would have carried a pensioner - a permit on sufficient legal income - was closed on 1 July 2012 and is recorded on the income topic. What Estonia does do for older people is remove obstacles once they are already here. A foreigner over 65 is exempt from the integration requirement for a long-term resident's residence permit, which is otherwise B1 Estonian; the state fee for that application falls from 185 to 93 euros at pensionable age; a person drawing an Estonian state pension is treated as an insured person under the health insurance Act without social tax being paid for them; and the income tax basic exemption at pensionable age is 9,312 euros a year against 8,400 for everybody else. One route does reach a parent or grandparent, and it is a family route rather than a retirement one: section 150(1) point 3 lets a parent or grandparent settle with an adult child or grandchild living in Estonia, if care is needed and cannot be had elsewhere.

A work permit in Estonia is built out of four things the Act states and one it does not. The employer must be entered in the Estonian commercial register and must have had real economic activity in Estonia for at least six consecutive months immediately before the application. The Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund must have given permission for the post, on the ground that it cannot be filled by an Estonian, a Union citizen or a foreigner already resident here, and that filling it with a foreigner is justified by the labour market - a permission that is attached to the job rather than to the person, and that is not required again when the permit is extended. The employer must pay at least the annual average gross wage last published by Statistics Estonia, regardless of the hours agreed, with 1.5 times that for a top specialist and 80 per cent of it for an employee of a growth company. And the Act never says what that wage is. The figure lives on a table published by the Police and Border Guard Board, which puts the rate at 2,092 euros a month for applications taken into proceedings between 5 March 2026 and March 2027. Every multiplier in the Act checks out against that table to the euro. On extension, the applicant must have reached A2 Estonian, with four exceptions and a permanent carve-out for anyone who held a work permit on 15 July 2018.

Estonia states its investment thresholds in the Act, which is unusual in this corpus: Finland names no amount anywhere. A shareholder applying for a business permit must have at least 65,000 euros invested in the share capital of an Estonian company, and the Act is narrow about what the money must have become - immovable property, machinery or equipment acquired with it and taken onto the books in Estonia as fixed assets. A sole trader needs 16,000 euros of capital invested in Estonia. Neither threshold applies to a start-up, nor to a company registered less than twelve months that is starting out on state or private investment. On top of the capital there is an income test at six times the subsistence limit, and a business plan description in Estonian or English. The large investor is a separate subdivision: a direct investment of at least 1,000,000 euros into an Estonian company investing mainly in the Estonian economy, or into an investment fund with the same policy, which must stay in place for the life of the permit. That permit comes with the single most striking exemption in the Act - section 197-4 disapplies the requirement of an actual place of residence in Estonia and the requirement to register an address in the population register. Estonia will give a residence permit to an investor who does not reside here. Neither the business permit nor the large investor permit counts against the immigration quota.

Estonia grants a student permit for as long as the curriculum nominally lasts, rather than a year at a time, and it puts no number on how much a student may work. Section 175 says a foreigner holding a study permit may work in Estonia without a separate permit, on condition that the work does not hinder the studies. There is no hour limit, no weekly average, no annual cap - the test is qualitative and it is the only one. That is a sharp divergence from Finland, which caps a student's work at an annual average of thirty hours a week, and it means the limit is whatever the Police and Border Guard Board decides hindrance means. The income test is four times the subsistence limit for each month in Estonia, and section 168-1 lets a student satisfy it with income that would not count as legal income for anybody else. Study is one of the grounds the immigration quota leaves out of its count, and a person who has held a study permit stays outside the count when applying on any other ground afterwards. One thing the permit does not bring is health insurance: section 172 removes a student from two of the categories the health insurance Act equates with insured persons.

Estonia has no residence permit for descent. Section 118 lists nine grounds and none of them is ancestry, and the Kodakondsuse seadus gives citizenship at birth only through a parent who was an Estonian citizen when the child was born. What descent does buy is the thing that is actually scarce in Estonia: a place outside the immigration quota. Section 115 point 1 leaves an ethnic Estonian - eestlane - out of the count of permits issued against the quota, and the Act never defines the word. The definition is in the ministerial regulation on applying for residence permits, and it is a rule of descent: an applicant of Estonian ethnicity who wants the quota disapplied submits a document proving ethnicity, that document may be about the applicant's parent or grandparent, and where it is, the applicant adds proof of descent from that person. So Estonian law does reach two generations back - but only to move an applicant out of the queue, never to create a ground for admission. Two other doors run in directions people expect them not to. A former Estonian citizen, or a former holder of an Estonian residence permit or right of residence, may be given a permit for permanent settlement under section 210-1(2). And the close-relative permit under section 150(1) point 3 reaches upwards: a parent or grandparent may settle with an adult child or grandchild living here, if they need care and cannot get it elsewhere. A grandchild of an Estonian cannot use it to come to Estonia.

Estonia's family route has a feature that nothing else in this corpus has in the same form. Section 142(1) says an application to settle with an Estonian spouse or registered partner may be deemed unjustified where the spouse living in Estonia could move to the applicant's country of citizenship or location, or where the couple could move to some third country. For a couple where neither is an Estonian citizen, subsection 2 goes further and reverses the burden: the application is deemed unjustified unless the two of them prove that they cannot move to a common country of citizenship or to the applicant's. The rest of the route is ordinary. The sponsor must be an Estonian citizen, a person of Estonian ethnicity, or a foreigner living here on a residence permit; the couple must have a close economic tie and psychological dependence and a family that is stable and not fictitious; the sponsor's income, or the couple's joint income, must secure the family's maintenance at twice the subsistence limit for each month in Estonia; and the family needs a registered address and an actual dwelling. Registered partners have been inside the section since 1 January 2024. Where the sponsor is a student, the sponsor must have lived here two years first, unless the studies are doctoral. Estonia sets no minimum age for either spouse - Finland requires both to be 21.

Estonia does not give a Union citizen a residence permit and does not make them apply for one. Section 13(1) of the Euroopa Liidu kodaniku seadus says a Union citizen acquires a temporary right of residence in Estonia for five years by registering a place of residence in the population register, and section 13(2) extends it automatically by five years more so long as the address is still registered and the right has not ended. The only clock is section 7(2): the address must be registered within three months of entering Estonia. An identity card must then be applied for within a month of that registration. Five consecutive years on the temporary right gives a permanent right of residence under section 40(1). None of this touches the Välismaalaste seadus, which section 1(2) hands over to this Act entirely for citizens of Union and EEA states and of Switzerland and for their family members. A family member who is not a Union citizen is in a different position: they need a travel document and a visa to be here at all under section 10(1), and their temporary right of residence is granted by the Police and Border Guard Board for up to five years and never for longer than the Union citizen's own stay.

Estonia's naturalisation requirement reads as eight years, which is the same number Finland moved to in October 2024. The eight years are not the whole of it. Section 6 of the Kodakondsuse seadus requires the applicant to be at least 15, to hold a long-term resident's residence permit or a permanent right of residence, to have lived here on a residence permit or right of residence for at least eight years of which five permanently, to have a registered address, to know Estonian to the standard in section 8, to know the Constitution and the citizenship Act, to have permanent legal income, to be loyal to the Estonian state and to take an oath the Act prints in full. The long-term resident's permit is its own gate: five years of residence under section 232(1) of the Välismaalaste seadus, and B1 Estonian under section 234. Section 8(1) of the citizenship Act then requires B1 again. The hardest condition is the last one. Section 1(2) says an Estonian citizen may not hold another citizenship at the same time, and section 12(2) requires an applicant to prove that they have been released from their existing citizenship, or will be on acquiring Estonian citizenship, or have been recognised as stateless. The one general exception is for a person who has international protection and cannot renounce. Against that stands section 5(3): citizenship acquired by birth can never be taken away from anyone - so a dual citizen by birth keeps both, and section 3(1), which tells a person who acquired both as a minor to choose within three years of turning 18, has nothing behind it.

Section 6(1) of the Tulumaksuseadus gives two alternative tests and then adds a sentence most income tax acts do not have. A natural person is a resident if their place of residence is in Estonia, or if they are present in Estonia for at least 183 days over twelve consecutive calendar months. Either one is enough. Then: a person is deemed to be a resident from the day of his or her arrival in Estonia. The 183 days are not a threshold you cross on day 183 going forward - crossing them makes you a resident from the first day. A resident pays Estonian income tax on all income, earned in Estonia and outside it alike, at a flat 22 per cent. The basic exemption is 8,400 euros a year from 1 January 2026 and is withdrawn once the person reaches old-age pension age, who gets 9,312 euros under a separate section instead. The twelve months are calendar months and need not line up with the tax year, and a tax treaty overrides the statutory test where the two disagree.

Section 5(1) of the Ravikindlustuse seadus names three groups of people who can be insured - a permanent resident of Estonia, a person living here on a temporary residence permit or right of residence, and a person lawfully present on a temporary basis and working - and then qualifies all three with one condition: social tax must be payable for them by someone, or they must pay it themselves. Residence is the gateway, not the entitlement. That is the divergence from Finland, where a determination of kotikunta under a 1994 Act makes a person a resident of a wellbeing services county and the county's duty follows. In Estonia the question is whether a social tax obligation exists. For an employee it does from the start date entered in the employment register, and cover begins after a fourteen-day waiting period counted from that date; it ends two months after the registered end of the employment, and suspends two months after a registered suspension. A second list, in section 5(4), equates certain people with the insured although no social tax is paid for them - a pregnant woman, anyone up to 19, a person drawing an Estonian state pension, a person with reduced work ability, a dependent spouse or registered partner within five years of pension age, pupils and resident students, and monks and nuns. A student on a residence permit is expressly cut out of two of those: section 172 of the Välismaalaste seadus disapplies points 2 and 5 of section 5(4) to them. Everyone applying for a residence permit must instead hold private medical cover of at least 6,000 euros for an annual insurance period.

Estonia transposed the Payment Accounts Directive into the law of obligations rather than into banking law, and in July 2025 it rewrote the transposition. Section 710-1(2) of the Võlaõigusseadus now obliges a credit institution to provide basic payment services to a consumer lawfully residing in the European Union and to conclude a basic payment service contract where the consumer has a justified interest - a condition that was not there before - and to make the services usable through several channels, the internet application among them. Subsection 2-1 limits the condition from the other side: proving the justified interest must not be unreasonably burdensome for the consumer. Subsection 3 forbids a refusal on grounds of nationality or place of residence where the consumer is a foreigner holding a valid Estonian residence permit or right of residence, or an applicant for international protection. The bank must conclude the contract or tell the consumer it is refusing within ten business days of a properly made application, and it must give the reasons in writing and free of charge unless disclosing them would conflict with national security, public order or the money laundering legislation. Refusal is compulsory on the grounds in section 42(1) of the money laundering Act, but the 2025 amendment also says a bank may not refuse on the basis of its own risk appetite: it must instead mitigate, by capping monthly payment volumes, single transactions, the balance held or cash withdrawals outside the EEA - and those measures may not go so far as to make the services unusable or leave the consumer and dependants unable to meet the needs of daily life. Fees must be reasonable, judged against the income level of Estonian residents and the average fees charged in Estonia.

Estonia sorts foreign licences into four boxes and gives three of them the same twelve months. A licence from a party to the 1968 Vienna Convention is valid for twelve months from the day the holder settles permanently in Estonia and is then exchanged with no exams at all; a licence that does not meet the Convention's requirements needs the theory and driving tests unless an international driving permit is produced with it. A licence from a party to the 1949 Geneva Convention gets the same twelve months, but only categories A and B are exchanged without exams - everything else needs both tests. Anything else gets twelve months and then both tests. A Union, EEA or Swiss licence is in a different box: it stays valid to the expiry date printed on it, with no clock at all, and only a licence whose validity period is longer than fifteen years has to be exchanged, by 18 January 2033. From 19 January 2033 that kind of licence must be exchanged within twelve months of obtaining a right of residence or settling in Estonia. Two anti-licence-tourism rules sit underneath all of this: a licence from outside the Union is void if it was first issued to someone who was already permanently resident in Estonia, and a Union licence is void if the issuing authority's own markings or other incontrovertible information show the holder was not resident in that state when it was issued. In both cases the exchange is available only after passing the theory and driving tests. Permanent residence for these purposes is 185 days a year, proved by the population register, and the person has to prove it.

Estonia does not decide the customs side of this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties under a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for non-consumable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move, in as many consignments as you like inside that period. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief. What Estonia adds is the second half of the bill. Section 17(2) of the Käibemaksuseadus says the import of goods named in Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 is not subject to value added tax on the conditions laid down for applying the customs relief, and then lists the articles it excludes from that treatment - articles 23 to 27, 42, 44 to 52, 57, 58, 67(1)(a), 68(1)(a) and 107 to 111. Articles 3 to 11, the transfer-of-residence relief, are not among the exclusions. So in Estonia the customs relief and the VAT relief stand or fall together, by name and by cross-reference, which is more than most member state records in this corpus can say.