The most loved brand in the Baltic States is the Swedish banking group, Swedbank, according to the Baltic Brand Forum 2025 survey, The Baltic Times reports. Lithuanian supermarket chain Maxima ranked second, followed by Estonia’s state-owned logistics group, Omniva, and German supermarket chain Lidl. The top four ranking remained unchanged from 2024. US technology company…
The Latvian parliament, the Saeima, has approved in final reading a law on setting up anti-mobility infrastructure along the country’s eastern border, LSM reports. Altogether 75 MPs voted in favour and 12 against the law. Latvia will build anti-tank ditches, obstacles, storage facilities, and other technical solutions over an area of around 2,000 hectares in…
Several hundred people protested outside the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, on 2 October 2025 against a proposal for Latvia to withdraw from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, LSM reports. The convention aims to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence. MPs from opposition parties and the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS),…
Websites of several state institutions in Latvia were hit by a major distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the morning of 2 October 2025, according to the Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC), LSM reported. The attack disrupted the websites of e-government portal Latvija.lv, electronic signature service eParaksts, the State Revenue Service (VID), the Cabinet…
The Latvian government has approved amendments to the law on electronic communications that would allow police and border guards to use signal jammers to combat illegal drones, LSM reports. If approved in parliament, the amendments would allow the State Police and the State Border Guard (VRS) to use special radio equipment to interrupt unwanted radio…
The three Baltic States must agree on a new financing model for the Baltic joint venture, RB Rail, which manages the Rail Baltica railway project, CEO Marko Kivila and CFO Ojars Daugavietis stressed, LETA reports. Kivila noted that RB Rail’s budget remains largely unchanged in 2025, and that the company has therefore halted hiring and…
Latvia’s Ministry of Education and Science has proposed reducing the number of advanced-level centralised exams in secondary school by one, LETA reports. Under the ministry’s proposal, graduates would be required to take five instead of six mandatory exams. At the moment, high school graduates in Latvia need to take five compulsory exams: Latvian, a foreign…
The Latvian government will need to borrow EUR 3.8bn on international financial markets in 2026 and EUR 4.3bn in 2027, according to Janis Rozenbergs, deputy manager of the State Treasury, LETA reports. He told the budget and finance committee of the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, that the government needed around EUR 2bn per year to…
Estonia’s state-owned energy group, Eesti Energia, will merge all of its electricity business into its fully-owned subsidiary, Enefit, as of 2026, ERR reports. The group will merge its Enefit entities in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland as well. The new Enefit will serve more than 560,000 retail customers in four countries. Eesti Energia says that the…