Every year in Estonia, new legal entities are established, while some companies go bankrupt, are liquidated, or are deleted. As more new legal entities have been created in recent years than old ones deleted, liquidated, or become bankrupt, the total number of active legal entities has increased each year. However, the year 2024 has been different from previous years.

On February 1, 2023, an update of the Business Register Act came into force, aiming, among other things, to expedite the deletion of non-operational legal entities from the business register. The new law provided the registrar with better tools to oversee whether legal entities meet their reporting obligations on time or not.

The same legislative amendment provided legal entities deleted from the registry due to the non-submission of the annual report or the absence of a contact person the opportunity to reinstate their entity. To resume activities, the entity must start the application for reinstatement, rectify the issue that led to the deletion (submit the annual report or contact person details), and then submit the application to the registry.
Reinstatement is possible within 3 years after deletion.

Bankruptcies are relatively rare, so they are not well visible in the first graph of this page and are therefore highlighted separately here.
The graph below shows the number of declared bankruptcies. Bankruptcy proceedings are initiated more frequently, but are often terminated for various reasons before bankruptcy is declared.