All foreign nationals interacting directly with customers in Lithuania will be required to be able to communicate in Lithuanian as of 1 January 2026, LRT reports. The rule applies to both foreign employees and their employers. The Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, approved the new regulation in October 2024. However, the exact language proficiency requirements and…
Estonia needs more skilled foreign labour, Hando Sutter, CEO of the Estonian Employers’ Confederation (ETK), stated, ERR reports. Speaking on ETV, Sutter noted that Estonia’s employment rate was now one of the highest in history. At the same time, the number of births was likely to be the lowest in 100 years in 2025, he…
Latvia’s Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) has called on its coalition partner, New Unity, to support withdrawing from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women and domestic violence, LETA reports. ZZS argued that a case of alleged inappropriate behaviour by a foreign worker towards a minor in Liepaja demonstrated that…
Poland will extend temporary checks at its borders with Lithuania and Germany for another six months until 4 April 2026 due to concerns over irregular migration, BNS reports. Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski noted that migrants were moving from Belarus via the Baltic States through Poland to Western Europe. Polish authorities detained around 60 people…
Poland has temporarily reinstated internal controls at 13 checkpoints on its border with Lithuania in response to increased secondary irregular migration via Belarus, LRT reports. Both Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service (VSAT) and the Lithuanian National Road Carriers Association (LINAVA) said that there were no traffic jams on the border on the first day of…
Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service (VSAT) has reported a sharp rise in secondary migration via Latvia, BNS reports. Altogether 352 irregular migrants who entered Latvia from Belarus were detained in Lithuania and Poland in the first half of 2025, which was up 2.5 times from 140 in the same period of 2024. Most of the…
No migrants have tried to cross the border illegally from Belarus to Latvia for nearly a month, the Latvian State Border Guard (VRS) announced, LETA reports. VRS has not detected any attempts at illegal crossings at the border with Belarus since 10 December 2024. VRS estimated that the drop in the flow of irregular migrants…
Lithuania’s Interior Minister, Vladislav Kondratovic, sees no need to relax existing restrictions on the entry of Belarusian citizens into Lithuania, BNS reports. Lithuania has stopped issuing new visas to Belarusian citizens with few exceptions and has closed four out of six checkpoints on the border with Belarus. Moreover, Belarusians arriving in the country are subject…
Latvia approved 30 applications for investor visas and 53 dependent visas under its so-called golden visa programme in the first half of 2024, Investment Migration Insider reports. The biggest number of approved applications were submitted by Chinese (11) and Turkish (7) nationals. The EUR 50,000 business investment option accounted for 22 and real estate investments…