Uncategorized
Lithuania leads way as car sales rise strongly in Baltic States
The Baltic automobile market experienced strong growth in 2015 with 52,058 new cars registered last year, or 7.9% more than in 2014. […]
Latvia
Uncategorized
Is Vilnius still the least expensive Baltic capital?
Vilnius is often hailed as the least expensive capital city among the Baltic countries – at least that is what the Lithuanian Statistical Department claims. However, price comparison website Numbeo.com shows that prices in Vilnius are very similar to Riga, and in some cases, even more expensive. […]
Uncategorized
The Kremlin’s view: why Baltic countries now pose a threat to Russia
Russian propagandists were not long ago deriding the inability of Baltic States to defend themselves but are now seeing something different: a threat to Russia. […]
Energy
Energy minister discusses potential nuclear power plant boycott with Estonian minister
Minister of Energy Rokas Masiulis, who sent out a letter to ministers in Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Finland urging them not to buy electricity from the nuclear power plants in Belarus or Kaliningrad, received the first positive answer to his letter when he met with Estonian Minister of Economy and Infrastructure Kristen Michal on Thursday. […]
Economy
Economy
Why is Lukoil really leaving Lithuania?
Just before Christmas, Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov announced that Lukoil would start to withdraw from Lithuania and Latvia. However, for a number of Lithuanian economists it appeared strange that one of the main reasons why Lukoil said that it had decided to withdraw from Lithuania and Latvia was not linked to the company‘s move to performance optimization and a switch on the wholesale oil market, but rather the anti-Russian mood in the two countries, alfa.lt reports. […]
Defence
Economy
Lithuanian GDP growth may outpace Estonia’s in 2016
Lithuanian economic growth this year has been the slowest among the Baltic countries, but analysts at Danske Bank predict that the country’s gross domestic product growth next year will be faster than in Estonia and, in 2017, will bypass Latvia as well. […]
Sports
Economy
Opinion
Russia paying financial compensation? A fata morgana
The issue re-appeared rather unexpectedly. On 5 November, after a meeting in Riga, the Justice Ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania released a statement, in which they peremptorily declared that their countries had been occupied by and had been “exploited for political and economic needs” by the Soviet Union. The “enormous demographic and socio-economic losses”, caused by “the totalitarian communist occupation regime of the USSR.” should be “calculated in a scientifically-justified manner”, they said. The final step would be that they would “claim legally and factually justified compensation from the Russian Federation”. […]
Energy
Society
Over 100,000 emigrants have returned to Lithuania over the past decade
On International Migrants Day (18 December), Statistics Lithuania announced that, over the last decade, 126,000 new residents immigrated into Lithuania while 438,500 emigrated. From 2005 to 2014, the percentage of emigrants of ages 20-39 grew from 51.9 to 59.2 percent. In 2014, as many as 82 percent of working-age people had not worked for a year or longer before leaving the country. […]
Energy
Common Baltic gas market is top priority, say regional energy leaders
On 15 December, Lithuania’s Ministry of Energy held a meeting of the Committee of Senior Energy Officials of the Baltic Council of Ministers (BCM) to address the development of a regional gas market and to cooperate on the synchronisation of the Baltic states’ power systems with the networks of Continental Europe, the ministry reports. […]
Society
Five Lithuanian basketballers win dubious honour of being named members of modern fantasy USSR team
A Russian sports website named sports.ru has given five Lithuanian basketball players the questionable honor of playing on that website’s modern-day USSR fantasy dream team. The article’s author recounted that four Lithuanian basketball players – Arvydas Sabonis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, Valdemaras Chomičius and Rimas Kurtinaitis – played for the Soviet Union when its basketball team took the gold at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. […]
Economy
Uncategorized
Latvian Prime Minister Straujuma resigns
Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma on Monday announced about her resignation. […]
Society
Defence
Lithuanian defence policy director: We have created a security club
Defence Minister Juozas Olekas has signed an agreement in London, establishing the Joint Expeditionary Force. Defence Policy Director at the Ministry of National Defence Vaidotas Urbelis says that the seven states that signed the agreement share a similar view on security and will be able to decide how to react to conflicts on their own. […]
Economy
Lithuanians far behind Estonians and Latvians in perceptions of shadow economy
Fewer businesspeople in Lithuania think underground economy is a problem than a year ago. However, Lithuania has a far bigger black market than the Central and Eastern European average, research shows. […]