Latvia made an official request to EU countries for assistance due to the country’s deteriorating Covid situation. Finland intends to respond to Latvia’s request for assistance due to the country’s deteriorating Covid situation, Safety and Health Department adviser Lasse Ilkka from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health told YleContinue Reading

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics (New Unity) told LETA on Tuesday after the meeting of the General Affairs Council of the European Union (EU) that there is a need for more active discussions and the laying down of common principles of the Covid-19 certificate. He noted that the meeting focusedContinue Reading

Latvia will be in “lockdown” for a month from Thursday as the government tries to bring the coronavirus situation under control and relieve pressure on the healthcare system, Latvia’s public broadcaster LSM reported on Monday. New restrictions include non-essential store closures and a curfew between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.Continue Reading

In Latvia, every citizen and permanent resident has to have the right to open a bank account, otherwise one of a person’s democratic freedoms is not respected, says Saeima opposition legislator Jānis Urbanovičs. According to him, since the Latvian financial sector control institutions and procedures have experienced a far-reaching reformContinue Reading

As Latvia prepares to introduce a bottle deposit system in 2022, the first five bottle deposit return machines have been erected in five shops in Riga and Ventspils. This week, the company SIA Tomra Collection Latvia has begun setting up bottle deposit return machines called ‘taromāts’ in Latvian in theContinue Reading

Russian-speaking people in Estonia and Latvia live in the Russian world, writer and social anthropologist Erika Fatland writes in Norway’s largest daily Aftenposten. In an article entitled “Trapped in the Kremlin’s long shadows” (“Fanget i Kremls lange skygger”), Fatland says that thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union,Continue Reading