Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Technology

“Estonia sees the IT agency mostly as a centre for development and competence. I think that due to our developed IT infrastructure and professional experts, the proposal to establish the agency in Estonia would be entirely reasonable,” said Pomerants.

At the same time, France is concerned over investments that have been made in the existing Schengen databases located in Strasbourg over the years. Estonia understands it, but considers it important that due to security reasons, the different systems would in future be situated in different geographic locations.

Both ministers agreed that the objective for establishing an IT agency would be to offer to tax-payers security with lower costs than are currently incurred.

Other issues discussed involved possible co-operation matters in the field of security within the European Union. The Estonian minister noted that the co-operation between the two countries has lately been very close and yielded good results. “This has largely been achieved due to the work done by the liaison officers from France who have initiated over the years a number of training sessions and seminars for Estonian experts in both countries,” explained Pomerants.