Police and Border Guard Board pauses auxiliary officer recruitment

Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board, the country’s police and border agency, has paused recruitment of auxiliary police officers until legal amendments clarifying background checks are adopted and come into force, ERR reported.

“According to the legal assessment of the Ministry of the Interior and the PPA, the provisions of the Auxiliary Police Officer Act concerning checks on whether applicants meet the requirements have shortcomings,” said Roger Kumm, head of the PPA’s prevention and misdemeanour proceedings bureau.

Under the current law, the PPA must check whether applicants meet the requirements, but the legal provisions enabling those checks are too general, Kumm said.

A bill currently before Parliament would establish more precise legal grounds for checking auxiliary police officer applicants. The PPA has therefore decided not to accept new applications until the amendments enter into force.

The bill would also expand auxiliary officers’ duties and the ways they can be deployed, while introducing more comprehensive training. Many current auxiliary officers would have to undergo retraining, Kumm said.

The PPA will use the recruitment pause, expected to last several months, to prepare for changes to the training programme and the implementation of the new law.

The PPA has more than 1,200 auxiliary police officers, who contributed over 170,000 hours to police work in 2025. The agency aims to increase their number to 1,500 by 2029. It recruited 302 new auxiliary officers last year and 188 in 2026.