📋 Tender Overview
Government of the Republic of Estonia approved a draft amendment to the Identity Documents Act, which simplifies the issuance of a single-use replacement document to a person who has lost their travel document while travelling.
After the entry into force of the Act, it is possible to verify the identity of the applicant for an emergency travel document and permission to return by video bridge. A replacement document – an emergency travel document and a permit of return – is issued to an Estonian citizen and a person of undetermined citizenship if their travel document was stolen, lost, destroyed, rendered unusable or expired while abroad. A person no longer has to go to an embassy or an honorary consul, but a single emergency travel document or permission to return is delivered to the person by courier mail. This makes it easier to help those in distress in countries with a large area, where an embassy or honorary consul may be located hundreds of kilometres away.
Remote identification also provides an opportunity to help those travelers who are in distant countries, where there are no Estonian embassies and honorary consuls, and where no Member States of the European Union are represented. There are currently 24 such countries in the world: Afghanistan, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Maldives, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, Bhutan, Dominica, the Marshall Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Eswatini, Grenada, Guyana, Lesotho, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
The person ordering the replacement document must be responsible for the Internet connection in order to ensure the regular operation of the video bridge, send the correct document photo to the embassy and pay the postal costs to the courier company. In addition, you also have to pay the standard state fee – 20 euros if the travel document was stolen or lost, and 100 euros if the travel document was expired.
The right and opportunity to personally go to the embassy or honorary consulate in order to obtain a document will continue to be preserved. In countries where there is no Estonian embassy or honorary consul, it is necessary to contact the embassies of the European Union member states represented on the spot to obtain a replacement document.
