It might happen that police would refuse to extend the e-residency which impacts business flow and eventually forcing honest entrepreneurs to leave. Reasons given by the police are usually narrowed down to applicants nationality, implying that extending the e-residentship might compromise Estonian state security. Even though refusing new applicants from selected nations is fully justified and specified in the rules, extending the existing e-residency is still possible, as explained in same rules on police website.
So far the only option to oppose this is to take this case to the court, which usually takes more than a year to resolve. My suggestion would be to have a dedicated lawyer who could mediate this case in Estonian court on behalf of affected entrepreneurs.
Is this something that’s happened to you, personally? At first glance, this doesn’t feel like a substantial or more-than-marginal risk for large numbers of people. Moreover, it isn’t likely that someone denied an extension would have a good legal basis for challenging it in court. I can’t see the justification for retaining a lawyer responsible for this issue.
The reality is that - for any immigration decision - non-citizens and non-residents generally have limited to no legal rights. I suspect that there could be some unfortunate “collateral damage” due to geopolitical developments, particularly concerning Russians and anyone coming from a country under economic sanctions. In short, that sucks - but I don’t see any tools available to Xolo to resolve or change that issue.
The agency responsible for handling e-residency applications in Estonia is the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board (Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet).
For Estonian e-Residency specifically, the Police and Border Guard Board has broad discretionary powers to evaluate and decide on applications. Some key points:
There is no legal right for non-Estonians to obtain e-Residency; it is considered a privilege granted at Estonia’s discretion.
The agency conducts background checks and can deny applications for various reasons, such as potential security risks, past criminal convictions, providing false information, etc.
Applicants have minimal formal appeal rights if the agency rejects their e-Residency application.
The criteria and decision-making process by the Police and Border Guard Board is not entirely transparent to applicants.
Estonia can revoke existing e-Residency status if they subsequently determine the person does not meet requirements or represents a risk.
The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board exercises substantial discretionary judgment over the entire e-residency application process for foreign nationals, with minimal rights of appeal available to applicants. I would generally expect these decisions to broadly be final from a legal standpoint.