Estonia has land borders to the south with Latvia and to the east with Russia . It is Estonia is mainly a lowland country that is bordered by the Baltic Sea , Latvia , and Russia . It has numerous lakes and forests and many rivers, most draining northward into the Gulf of Finland or eastward into Lake Peipus , its largest lake. Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern separated from Finland in the north by the Gulf of Finland and from Sweden in the west by the Baltic Sea .

Estonia has been a member of the European Union since 1 May 2004 , and of NATO since 29 March 2004 . The Estonian language, along with closely related Finnish as well as Hungarian and Maltese, is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.

Estonia is a constitutional democracy, with a president elected by its unicameral parliament (elections are held every four years). The government or the executive branch is formed by the prime minister, nominated by the president, and a total of 14 ministers. The government is appointed by the president after approval by the parliament.

Estonia is located in a humid zone in which the amount of precipitation is greater than total evaporation. There are about 160 to 180 rainy days a year, and average precipitation is biggest on the western slopes of the Sakala and Haanja Uplands. Snow cover, which is deepest in the south-eastern part of Estonia , usually lasts from mid-December to late March.

The country's official language is Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language which is closely related to Finnish. It has been influenced by German, and like Finnish contains many Swedish words. Russian is also widely spoken as a secondary language by thirty- to seventy-year-old ethnic Estonians, because Russian was taught as a compulsory second language during the Soviet era. Many younger Estonian people can usually speak English, having learned it as their first foreign language. Some Russians residing in Estonia do not speak Estonian, but many of those who remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union have begun to learn it.

In the southernmost region of the country, some 70,000 people speak Voro, a Baltic-Finnic language closely related to Estonian.