Estonia Eurozone. The European Union Agency for large-scale IT systems is based in Tallinn, which started operations at the end of 2012. Estonia held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2017. Since the early 1990s, Estonia has been involved in active trilateral Baltic states co-operation with Latvia and Lithuania, and Nordic-Baltic co-operation with the Nordic countries. The Baltic Council is the joint forum of the interparliamentary Baltic Assembly and the intergovernmental Baltic Council of Ministers. Estonia has built close relationship with the Nordic countries, especially Finland and Sweden, and is a member of
Languages of Estonia residing in the coastal areas and islands of what is now western and northern Estonia. The beginning of the continuous settlement of Estonian Swedes in these areas (known as "Aiboland") dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries, when their Swedish-speaking ancestors arrived in Estonia from what is now Sweden and Finland. Almost all of Estonia's Swedish-speaking minority fled to Sweden during World War II, and only the descendants of a few individuals who opted to stay are permanently resident in Estonia today. The Estonian Sign Language (ESL, ) is the national sign language of Estonia. In 1998 there were