page_title: Finland
section_title: Foreign relations
hierarchical_section_title: Finland / Politics / Foreign relations
caption_attribution_description: English: Nobel Peace Prize 2008, Martti Ahtisaari
context_page_description: Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country located in Northern Europe. Finland shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, and Norway to the north and is defined by the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south that are part of the Baltic Sea. Finland has a population of approximately 5.5 million, making it the 25th-most populous country in Europe. With an area of 338,455 square kilometres, Finland is the eighth-largest country in Europe, and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is the largest city in the country.
  Finland is a parliamentary republic consisting of 19 regions and 310 municipalities. The archipelago of the Åland Islands located southwest of the mainland is the only autonomous region of Finland. The climate in Finland varies due to the country's relatively vast latitudinal differences; southern Finland is classified as having a humid continental climate with the rest of the country being characterised by a boreal climate. Finland can be considered to have a mainly boreal forest biome.
context_section_description: According to the 2012 constitution, the president (currently Sauli Niinistö) leads foreign policy in cooperation with the government, except that the president has no role in EU affairs.
  In 2008, president Martti Ahtisaari was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Finland was considered a cooperative model state, and Finland did not oppose proposals for a common EU defence policy. This was reversed in the 2000s, when Tarja Halonen and Erkki Tuomioja made Finland's official policy to resist other EU members' plans for common defence.
caption: Martti Ahtisaari receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008
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