Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip (left) shakes hands with Chilean finance minister Felipe Larraín, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor and OECD secretary general Angel Gurría Thursday in Paris. Photo by Andrew Wheeler/OECD

TALLINN — On Friday Estonia formally joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, along with Chile, Israel and Slovenia.

Estonia is the first Baltic state to join the OECD, which includes most of the world’s wealthiest nations. If Estonia manages to be admitted into the eurozone next year, it would cap off a long effort toward increased integration with the Western world that Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s government has strove for in the face of the worst economic crisis the country has faced post-independence.

Ansip attended an induction ceremony at the OECD headquarters in Paris Thursday.

“This year is very important for Estonia. For a long time Estonia has had two important policy goals: joining the OECD and becoming part of the euro area. Today, we can say that the first goal has been achieved, and the second one is within our reach,” Ansip told BNS Thursday.

The OECD is international economic organization established in 1961 by the Convention on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Its predecessor was the OEEC, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation established in 1948 to administer the Marshall Plan aid from the U.S. to reconstruct Europe after World War II.

The OECD has currently 34 member states.

This article is free to view. To read Baltic Reports’ subscription-only articles, click here.