National authorities

The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board was founded on 1 January 2010 by merging the Police Board, Central Criminal Police, Personal Protection and Law Enforcement Police, the Border Guard Board, the Aviation Group of Border Guard and Citizenship and Migration Board. It is the biggest state authority in Estonia with a total of 6 908 employees. The main tasks of the Border Guard Field are guarding and protecting the state border at land, sea and border waters, preventing the violent changing of and illegal crossings of the state border, counteracting the smuggling of goods across the state border, securing border regime, performing border control, checking the legality of aliens staying in Estonia and fulfilling search and rescue functions, as well as detecting and liquidating sea pollution.