Estonia Wants to Give Every AI Agent Its Own ID

1Putting AI Agents on the National Registry

In June 2026, Estonia's prime minister, Kristen Michal, endorsed a proposal to give every AI agent its own ID code, recorded in the same national registry that already tracks the country's citizens and companies. Estonia has spent two decades building a digital state, from online voting to its e-Residency program. Giving software a place in the registry is less surprising there than it would be elsewhere. Each agent's code would be tied to the person or organization that deployed it.

To that end, it must be clear who is acting on whose behalf with what rights, and who is ultimately responsible.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal

The aim is to make an agent's authority easy to see. An agent's ID would record what it is allowed to do, whether that is reading data, editing documents or making payments, and up to what limit. The framework is also meant to be verifiable and auditable, so an agent's actions can be traced back to a named person or company.

2An Operator, a Limit and a Record

The prime minister's office was direct about the problem it wanted to avoid:

The new IDs will help to prevent situations where individuals or organisations are required to grant AI assistants access to all of their rights, services and data.

Office of the Prime Minister of Estonia

The proposal rests on three principles that anyone governing AI agents would recognize. An agent should answer to a named operator. Its permissions should stay within set limits. What it does should be recorded. The prime minister has asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs to draft the legislation. The technical specifics, including how an agent's permissions and limits would be issued and checked, would be worked out there.

Source: Office of the Prime Minister of Estonia on AI agent identification, June 2026, as reported by Estonian public broadcaster ERR.