Many entrepreneurs who are e-residents carry one fear: if Estonia ever closes the e-Residency program, their Estonian company will disappear with it. The question comes up again and again. The fear is understandable, but it is wrong.
A company is an independent legal person. It is born when it is entered in the Commercial Register, and it ends only when it is deleted from the register. The existence of a company is tied to the register. It does not depend on the tool you use to log in to that register. The Commercial Code says this directly:
The legal capacity of a company commences upon its entry in the Commercial Register and terminates upon its deletion from the Commercial Register, if the company has no assets.
— Commercial Code § 2 subsection 3
The existence of your company therefore depends on the register, not on e-Residency. E-Residency is only a digital identity document that lets you run your company over the internet. It is a convenient tool, not the foundation of your company. It does not give you Estonian citizenship and it does not change your tax residency. The end of the program is therefore not the end of the company.
So what would actually change? The convenient way of signing documents digitally with the card and filing reports would disappear. The actions themselves would remain. They can also be done in other ways — at a notary, for example, or through an authorized representative who acts in your name. Owners of companies with foreign capital use these options anyway, even now. It would be less convenient and slower, but not fatal.
A far more likely obstacle comes from your own pocket. The most common situation where an entrepreneur suddenly cannot manage the company is an expired personal document: the e-Residency card has passed its expiry date and a new one was not ordered in time. You can prevent that risk yourself.
And as for the program itself: no closure plan has been announced. The direction has been to develop and expand the program rather than to close it. Do not build your plans on an unlikely event.
In short: if the program did end one day, you would simply sign documents through a representative. Exactly as owners did before e-Residency. Your company would remain.
This article was prepared with the help of artificial intelligence.