Lithuania’s Vilnius city municipality plans to stop offering Russian as a second foreign language to sixth-grade school students as of the academic year 2024/2025, LRT reports. Deputy mayor Arunas Sileris said that the municipality wanted to increase the availability of official EU languages at schools. Going forward, sixth-graders will be able to choose French, German,…
Teachers in Estonia began a nationwide strike on 22 January 2024 to press for higher pay, ERR reports. The Estonian Education Personnel Union (EHL) said that altogether 9,471 teachers at 330 general education schools were taking part in the strike. The number of strikers will almost double to 18,176 when kindergarten and vocational school teachers…
Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) has refused to extend the residence permit of Metropolitan Eugene (Valery Reshetnikov) of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, ERR reports. The head of the Russian church in Estonia will therefore have to leave the country by 6 February 2024. Despite repeated warnings, Reshetnikov has continued…
Latvia’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (PMLP) has identified 985 Russian citizens who did not comply with the law on immigration and may therefore have to leave the country, LETA reports. The persons have two weeks to respond to notifications urging them to legalise their status. Some of the persons may already have left…
Estonia’s population totalled 1,366,491 people in the beginning of 2024, which was 607 more than a year earlier, according to Statistics Estonia’s preliminary data, BNS reports. The number of live births totalled 10,721 in 2023, which was 925 less than in 2022. The number of births was the lowest since 1919, when population data began…
Satisfaction with life in the Baltic States was lowest in Latvia in 2022, according to Eurostat data, LSM reported. Residents in Latvia rated their overall life satisfaction at just 6.8 out of 10 points in 2022, which was up from 6.7 in 2021. The indicator stood at 7.1 (7.0) points in Lithuania and 7.2 (7.2)…
Lithuania’s Justice Minister, Ewelina Dobrowolska, warned against “populism” over the issue of Russian schools, BNS reported. Earlier, Education Minister Gintautas Jakstas suggested that Lithuania follow Estonia and Latvia in closing Russian schools. Speaking in an interview with Ziniu Radijas, Dobrowolska conceded that minority education faced challenges but insisted that they be dealt with by ensuring…
The Estonian Education Personnel Union (EHL) has called an open-ended general strike of education workers for 22 January 2024, ERR reports. Around 2,800 teachers in Tallinn will participate in the strike and another 500 in a sympathy strike. Meanwhile, teachers in Tartu will not take part in the general strike as they have signed a…
There will be no referendum against same-sex civil partnership in Latvia, LSM reports. A campaign to hold a popular referendum to suspend the publication of the new partnership law collected just some 15% of the around 155,000 signatures needed. The campaign, which was supported by the opposition United List, National Alliance, Latvia First, and For…