Two Bills passed the first reading in the Riigikogu

The Bill on the Ratification of the Final Acts of the Extraordinary Congress of the Universal Postal Union in Riyadh (689 SE), initiated by the Government, passed the first reading. It will ratify two international agreements adopted by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in Riyadh in 2023: the fourth additional protocol to the general regulations and the first additional protocol to the Postal Convention.  The amendments will specify the role of a governing body of the UPU, raise the budget ceiling and better align postal services with the needs of e-commerce, particularly in terms of traceability. These are mainly technical and internal organizational changes that will have little impact on end users.

The Bill on Amendments to the Public Transport Act (725 SE), initiated by the Government, also passed the first reading. It will amend the procedure for keeping records of service provider cards in the public transport register. The aim of the Bill is to consolidate economic activity data subject to special requirements into a single register in order to ensure more efficient data management, reduce administrative costs and increase security.

Currently, service provider cards can be applied for and processed in the register of economic activities, but physical cards are issued, managed, and published in the public transport register. Such fragmentation increases the administrative burden on the state and businesses.  In addition, the public transport register is an outdated and poorly maintained system, which means that hosting data in this environment poses serious security risks, and other Transport Administration systems located in the same cluster are also at risk.

Therefore, the current practice of displaying service provider cards to the public will be discontinued, and the application for the cards, the issuance of the cards, and record-keeping will be transferred to the register of economic activities. This will reduce duplicate management of registers, improve data security, and simplify administration for both the state and businesses.

Another amendment concerns the requirement to provide a photo on the service card.  Today’s procedure requires that a person provide an identity photo in the application in order to obtain a service card.  This requirement is a leftover from the time when a physical card was the primary means of identification. Such a photo does not increase security, but it does create risks regarding data protection and misuse and requires an expensive IT-solution. At the same time, the planned amendment is in line with data protection principles according to which the state should not collect or store data that it does not actually need. 

The amendment is scheduled to enter into force on 1 January 2026.

 Mart Maastik from Isamaa Parliamentary Group and Rene Kokk from the Estonian Conservative People’s Party Parliamentary Group took the floor during the debate.

Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)

Video recording is available on the Riigikogu YouTube channel.

Riigikogu Press Service
Maiki Vaikla
+372 631 6456, +372 5666 9508
maiki.vaikla@riigikogu.ee
Questions: press@riigikogu.ee

Link uudisele: Two Bills passed the first reading in the Riigikogu

Source: Parliament of Estonia