Due to sanctions, Russia has been unable to sell its electricity to the Baltic countries and Finland since mid-May. Currently Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are only connected to Russia due to being in the same frequency band, which is managed centrally from Moscow. However, as the Baltic States have been trying to maintain a clean…
The results of a new opinion poll, released on June 7, indicate that 70% of Poles want to see tax privileges for the Catholic Church abolished. The Ibris survey, done for the private broadcaster Radio Zet, also showed that 23% of the respondents wanted the tax relief to stay. The findings also disclosed that 66%…
The IMF mission has commended the Lithuanian government’s response to economic challenges, noting that inflation, which is among the highest in the EU, should abate until the end of the year. Lithuania is well prepared to meet economic challenges brought by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as the country’s government has chosen the…
To reduce patient fees for healthcare services in Latvia, which are some of the highest among EU member states, the Ministry of Health has prepared and submitted for a public discussion a conceptual report on financial accessibility of medicines, the ministry reports. One of the proposals is reducing VAT rate from 21% to 5% in…
The consumer price index (CPI) rose by 20% YoY in May, state agency Statistics Estonia said, driven primarily by soaring energy prices starting from last autumn. Services alone were 28.8% more expensive than in May last year, goods cost 15.7% more. Viktoria Trasanov, leading analyst at Statistics Estonia, said: “Electricity to the home was 146.3%…
Lithuanian recruitment company Nermeka and ice cream producer IceCo were fined for exploiting Ukrainian workers, which was revealed by Siena Centre for Investigative Journalism last month. Nermeka is a company that provides recruitment services to job seekers and workers for companies seeking employees. When the war broke out in Ukraine, the company announced on social…
The Ukrainian side would like the European Union to include a total embargo on Russian energy in the seventh package of sanctions. “What would we like to see in the seventh package of sanctions? Of course, time will tell, but we are talking about a total embargo on Russian energy, i.e. pipeline oil, but this…