Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet
Applies the ruleThe Police and Border Guard Board, the authority that decides every Estonian residence permit, registers short-term employment, issues the e-resident's digital identity card and runs the migration advisers. Its guidance pages at politsei.ee/et/juhend/... are the agency describing the law it applies, and they carry one thing no instrument does: the salary-criterion table for work permits. The Välismaalaste seadus sets the floor as the annual average gross wage last published by Statistics Estonia and names no figure; the agency publishes the resulting rate for a twelve-month window running from early March, with columns for the 0.8, 1.0, 1.24 and 1.5 multipliers. For 5 March 2026 to March 2027 the 1.0 rate is 2,092 euros a month. The agency also states processing times, the state fee steps and the list of grounds for each permit type.
The body that applies the rule and decides applications. It publishes what it requires, which is authoritative about its own practice but is not the text of the law.
www.politsei.eeCannot be cited for
It is not the instrument and must never be cited for what the law says. Two divergences were found on two pages read. Its work-permit page states the A2 Estonian requirement as applying where the applicant has lived in Estonia five years on a permit issued after 15 July 2018; section 187(2) of the Välismaalaste seadus attaches it to any extension of a work permit, and section 309-11 exempts anyone who held such a permit on 15 July 2018, with no five-year qualifier anywhere. Its business-permit page says the shareholder must have invested 65,000 euros 'into that company's activity in Estonia'; section 192(2) requires the money to be in the share capital of an Estonian company and to have been spent on immovable property, machinery or equipment taken onto the books in Estonia as fixed assets, which is narrower. The site also returns a soft 404 page with a 200-looking body for a mistyped guidance URL - politsei.ee/et/juhend/elamisluba-tootamiseks returns the error page while elamisluba-toeoetamiseks returns the guide - so a stored reading from this host has to be inspected before it is quoted.
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