TALLINN (AFP) -- Estonia will raise the issue of huge jams of trucks waiting to cross the border into Russia at a meeting with its European Union partners, officials said, adding that the snarls are causing traffic and health problems.

"We will raise the issue of border congestion at an EU customs meeting" on November 29 in Brussels, Reelika Raamat, spokeswoman for the Estonian Tax and Customs Board, told AFP.

"We are working closely with Finland and Latvia for an exchange of information and coordination of positions," she said.

"The lengthening of the queues at the border has largely been caused by a big increase in the trade going through Estonia to Russia," Raamat said, but the slow processing of customs clearances by Russian officials has contributed to the jams.

The long lines of trucks -- which have also formed on at border crossings into Russia from Finland and Latvia -- have also created dangerous situations for other road users, as the truckers have to park their vehicles on the hard shoulders of the highway.

The truck drivers' wellbeing is also threatened, as they find themselves at the border, where they have had to wait up to six days, with no eating or sanitary facilities.

The Estonian Interior Ministry on Tuesday ordered officials in border-crossing towns to install portable toilets at the roadside.

At two border crossings in eastern Latvia, where more than 1,500 trucks were waiting to enter Russia, officials have already installed rubbish bins and portable toilets, and were in the process of setting up more such facilities.

Latvian border guards have been handing out numbered tickets to prevent queue-jumping and maintain order, and the government has fast-tracked measures to reduce the congestion at the border by building a parking lot and another road for trucks heading to the border.

An official in Latvia's eastern Ludza district, Juris Dombrovskis, warned Tuesday that the situation will only worsen when winter sets in, but stressed there was no quick fix for the problem, Latvian national news agency, LETA, reported.

In northeastern Estonia, queues of more than 10 kilometers (six miles) have formed on the highway leading to the Narva border crossing into Russia, according to the Estonian border guard.

"The situation is not normal," Merle Kungas, deputy under-secretary at the Estonian Interior Ministry, said on Estonian Radio.

"The easing-up of the congestion depends on agreements with Russia," she said.

The EU is due to hold a summit meeting with Russia in Helsinki on Friday, days ahead of the customs officials' meeting in Brussels. At the Helsinki meeting, the EU hopes to launch negotiations with Moscow on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement to replace a decade-old accord which expires next year.

The Estonian Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to Russia in the summer, when the traffic snarls first began, asking the Russian authorities to solve the "critical situation" on the border.