Estonia National Holiday

Independence Day

On February 24, 1989, the red flag of Soviet Estonia was replaced by the blue-black-white Estonian national flag on Toompea, and since that time Independence Day has been celebrated once again as a public holiday. This year Estonia will celebrate the 94th anniversary of the declaration of state independence.

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti Vabariik), is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia (343 km), and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia (338.6 km). Across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia covers 45,227 km2 (17,462 sq mi), and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The Estonians are a Finnic people, and the official language, Estonian, is a Finno-Ugric language closely related to Finnish, and distantly to Hungarian and to the Sami languages.

Estonia is a democratic parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties, with its capital and largest city being Tallinn. Estonia's population of 1.3 million makes it one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A developed country with an advanced, high-income economy, Estonia has the highest gross domestic product per person among the former Soviet republics, and is a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.