Estonia

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in north-eastern Europe, bounded by the Baltic Sea to the west, the Gulf of Finland to the north, Russia to the east, and Latvia to the south. Ethnic Estonians form a majority of the population, at 68.6%. There is also a large Russian minority (25.7%), and smaller minorities of Ukrainians (2.1%), Byelorussians (1.2%), and Finns (0.8%). In the 1990’s, Estonia enacted sweeping economic liberalization, even introducing a flat tax in 1994. In 2005, Estonia was ranked fourth in the world in the Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation. In 2004, its gross domestic product grew by 6.2%. The government introduced the Euro on January 1st, 2009.