Ten northern European countries, including Estonia, have signed a memorandum of understanding on protecting civilians in the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries, enabling the temporary cross-border movement of people in the event of a crisis or war.

The signatories to the memorandum are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway and Poland.

In the event of a crisis or war, it may become necessary to evacuate people temporarily from one location to another. Experience from Ukraine has shown that such temporary population movements can help sustain a country’s defence while protecting civilians, the Swedish government said in a statement.

“We are NATO members and neighbours who depend on one another for our security,” Sweden’s minister for civil defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said in a statement, adding that the memorandum “expresses our desire to further deepen cooperation in our region and to strengthen our joint preparedness”.

The signatory countries will jointly plan how an evacuation across land borders could be carried out. This includes reviewing transport, border controls, evacuation corridors, the reception and registration of evacuees, and the protection of particularly vulnerable groups.

In 2025, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania agreed to draw up contingency plans in case they needed to move hundreds of thousands of people across their borders in the event of a Russian attack. The previous year, Finland signed a similar agreement with Sweden.