Northern Dimension to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, the importance of the Northern Dimension has increased considerably: eight EU Member States (Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden) surround the Baltic Sea, and the EU’s shared border with Russia has lengthened. Recent years have seen far-reaching changes in the geopolitical map of northern Europe. The Baltic States regained their independence in 1991. Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in 2004. These events greatly increased the Northern and Baltic “presence” of the EU, and substantially lengthened the common border shared by the
Poland–Russia border Soviet Union (USSR), shaped during the Polish-Soviet War, and confirmed at the Treaty of Riga at the line Dzisna-Dokshytsy-Słucz-Korets-Ostroh-Zbrucz. That border was long. Following World War II, the new border (see territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II) was drawn between the People's Republic of Poland and the USSR. The new Polish-Soviet border was long at first, and subject to a minor modification in the 1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange, which reduced the border length to . The modern border between Poland and Russia is regulated by a number of legal documents, many of them dating to the times