On Oct. 1, the recently adopted law on dual citizenship came into effect in Latvia.This law has the potential to affect thousands of people, including many readers of Latvians Online.

Practically, the law affects two categories of people:

• For exiles from Latvia or their successors, it means they can have dual citizenship of both Latvia and their host county; this replaces the earlier arrangement where Latvia in general did not recognize dual citizenship and one had to renounce one’s other citizenship in order to take up Latvian citizenship.
• For those who already have Latvian citizenship, it makes it legal to obtain dual citizenship with a wide range of countries, without giving up Latvian citizenship.

Some history is in order, to understand why this has come about.

Traditionally Latvia, like many other countries still around the world, did not recognize dual citizenship. Its basic citizenship law dates from that adopted in 1919, when dual citizenship was prohibited.

This policy line was followed when Latvian citizenship became an issue again after regaining independence in 1991, when dual citizenship continued to not be allowed, with one major exception.

The exception was for those who had gone into exile in the West during World War II, and were outside Latvia during the long years of Soviet occupation. The basis of Latvian citizenship law post-USSR was that Latvia, like Estonia, counted as citizens all those who had been citizens in 1940, at the time of Soviet takeover, plus their descendants. Exiles thus were theoretically Latvian citizens, but many had taken up citizenship in other countries. Thus, to make this a limited and controllable exception, the 1994 adopted Citizenship Law allowed exiles to renew Latvian citizenship provided they registered by July 1995, thus making them the only ones with dual citizenship. After this time, to gain Latvian citizenship they had to give up any other citizenship they had obtained.

For many reasons – lack of knowledge, lack of information and publicity, lack of administrative arrangements – many exiles however did not take up the opportunity to renew their citizenship, and the closing of this opportunity in July 1995 was widely criticised. Moreover, it led to significant contradiction in the way Latvian citizenship was granted. When the Soviets took over the Baltic States in 1940 through a process of threats and blackmail, many Western countries including the US, Britain and most Western European countries did not recognize their incorporation into the Soviet Union. And Latvian embassies and consulates, albeit with vastly reduced capacity, continued to operate and issue Latvian passports in many countries, so that we had a paradoxical situation where some held these ‘old’ Latvian passports but if for whatever reason they had not applied for renewed citizenship in 1995, they were not now recognised as Latvian citizens.

The reason for restricting citizenship to those who had been citizens in 1940 was that during the Soviet period, vast numbers of settlers came to the Baltic States; many never learnt the local languages nor in many cases did they know anything about the history, culture or background of these countries, as the Soviet Union repressed any expression of national history. On regaining independence, Latvia did not recognise these settlers as citizens, though it did provide a means of naturalisation, dependent on passing a language and history test. This has been a controversial policy, and even today is particularly criticised by Russia and by some elements within Latvia, but it shows how sensitive the issue of citizenship can be.

However, it was perhaps not the pressure from former exiles that led to the eventual change, but to another striking circumstance affecting Latvia: the now hundreds of thousands of Latvians who have left Latvia in the last 20 years or so to work elsewhere, many of whom have taken up citizenship in countries where they settled. As Latvia’s population had fallen from 2.5 to 2 million in this time, Latvia was faced with a huge brain drain and flight of the economically able. And, precisely a flight of citizens: if Latvia had stuck to its policy of not allowing dual citizenship, many would have given up their Latvian citizenship to take up that of their host country, and their children – in many cases granted citizenship of their host country at birth – would never have been able to become Latvian citizens.

But there was one more complication. Not all countries in which Latvians live and work are necessarily, let us say, friendly towards Latvia. So, for those already with Latvian citizenship, Latvia limited the range of countries where dual citizenship is allowed, limiting it to the European Union, NATO and European Free Trade Association countries, as well as countries where many Latvians had settled – Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.

For those without Latvian citizenship however, but who do have Latvian exile roots, they can apply for Latvian dual citizenship regardless of which other country has given them existing citizenship, provided that other country does allow dual citizenship.

So, the pressure to change the citizenship law grew from two directions – exiles and the more recent largely economic emigrants.

For those who are former Latvian citizens or their descendants, you can apply for Latvian citizenship now at any embassy or consulate (see the list of diplomatic and consular representations on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website) presenting relevant documentation as prescribed by the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (Pilsonības un migrācijas lietu pārvalde – PMLP), which details how you can apply (Admissibility of Dual Citizenship). There is no language or history test for such applicants. 

The extraordinary thing is that no-one knows how many potential Latvian citizens there could be to take advantage of these changes in the law. Thousands certainly. Hundreds of thousands? Maybe. For some, Latvian citizenship may mean no more than an ability to have a passport that allows one to travel and stay (not necessarily work) in any EU country and perhaps easier access to other countries. For others who simply missed out in 1995, it brings them back to a citizenship that they deserve. And for children of Latvians born outside Latvia, it means that Latvian citizenship is guaranteed and many will make use of this to deepen their connection to Latvia.

It is rare for Australia to be mentioned in Latvian political despatches: as in most of the world, news from Australia usually only covers bushfires, floods, sharks or crocodiles.

Yet over this Christmas-New Year period, considerable political passion was spent on Latvia’s Minister for Culture, Žanete Jaunzeme-Grende’s visit to Australia. She was in Adelaide to attend the biennial Latvian Cultural Festival and other cultural events and was accompanied by her husband, spending 10 days in the country. Yet the political storm this created reveals a still nasty underside to Latvian politics and more generally social attitudes there.

Why was she there? Why had she chosen to go to Australia in their summer? With her husband – who paid for his ticket? How much was her airfare? Who knew or did not know about her trip? She changed from one hotel to another, closer to the beach! How much did the overtaxed Latvian taxpayer have to fork out for her junket?

Jaunzeme-Grende is from the National Alliance political grouping, and was made Minister for Culture when in coalition negotiations the Alliance was given this portfolio. She is not a professional politician, and has in fact an unusual background for this Ministry – such a position is very prominent and important in Latvia, and has usually been held by people closely associated with the cultural field. Jaunzeme-Grende has a business background, run her own successful risk management firm, and has headed several business organisations.

People in the culture industry in Latvia thus generally do not see her as one of “us”, but she has her own articulate view of cultural priorities: she sees that Latvia produces excellent cultural products, but these need to be publicised, sold and marketed to the world; yet given the long-standing fiscal crisis in Latvia and its slow recovery, resources for culture and the arts had diminished. Latvia has significant cultural events coming up – the notable Song and Dance Festival in July this year, and Riga will be one of Europe’s cultural capitals next year; the much fought-over National Library will also be completed then. And as the economy recovers, these cultural items are important for the Latvian economy and for its profile and brand.

As can be imagined, Jaunzeme-Grende may have people who do not wish her well from within the cultural community, and indeed they were notable in their lack of support for her when trouble brewed. Her visit, which had not received any attention before it happened, was picked up by journalists and the active political scandal sheet http://www.pietiek.com

For some reason President Andris Bērziņš, who has little connection with the Minister’s day-to-day affairs, stepped into this, stating he could not understand the reason for the Minister’s trip to Australia, it did not appear useful and did not see it as an effective way of keeping in contact with Latvians overseas. Indeed, he pointed to his own more effective way: in the previous year he had met, in Latvia, with a number of the Honorary Consuls of Latvia in Australia (several states in Australia have such positions) and felt from that meeting he had all the understanding he needed of Latvians in Australia and their situation. Now, Bērziņš has a terrible record in relation to the Latvian diaspora: he is best known there for his comment that the next Director of Latvia’s security service, currently the ex-British Latvian Jānis Kažociņš who is not seeking renomination, should be a “Latvian from Latvia”. His comments were widely criticised and interpreted as wanting a more political ‘insider’ and less independent candidate for the job. His address to the diaspora on Latvian National Day on November 18 was almost incoherent, stodgy, totally uninspiring; it is not clear whether this was poor rehearsal, or indicates growing personal feebleness.

Yet the President’s effort did not end there. The Mebourne-based Latvian online newspaper http://www.laikraksts.com contacted the President’s office to ask if his comments meant that he would never himself envisage travelling to Australia as President to meet Latvians there? They received a classic back-flip – No, of course the President would be pleased to visit if circumstances permitted, it was important to keep up relations with the diaspora etc. We have problems with our President.

An equally poorly-briefed Prime Minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, looked serious in his doorstop interview, commenting darkly that this was the first time any ministerial visit during his government had raised concern, and said he would investigate the matter. Now, either of these two leaders could have easily stopped the supposed scandal as soon as it had begun, all they needed to say was that the Minister was doing her job. Dombrovskis, an economic technocrat who has done well in the eyes of this commentator to guide Latvia through its financial crisis, unfortunately seems to be completely inarticulate in fields outside economics; yet culture, education (where Dombrovskis also has not supported the Minister with this portfolio), welfare, social integration and having a vision for Latvia’s future are now urgent matters, and demand leadership. Are we beginning to have a problem with our Prime Minister too?

Unfortunately, Jaunzeme-Grende did not endear herself on her return to Latvia – shocked by the allegations, she responded emotionally, and in relation to a very vitriolic campaign against her in the social media and some newspapers who had themselves generated the ‘scandal’, in one interview she quoted Coco Chanel’s aphorism “I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all” – and later needed to retreat and apologise for this.

As it came out in the wash, all the allegations of ministerial wrongdoing were without foundation. Her husband paid for his trip himself, she participated exhaustively in the cultural activities in Adelaide, the visit was perfectly in line with government policy – visiting the diaspora is often done by leaders including the President and Prime Minister, and the government is also finally showing increasing concern about the number of people who have left Latvia to find work in other countries, often carrying with them very negative attitudes towards the Latvian state. And yet, Jaunzeme-Grende is still being pursued: she has been reported to the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), but one of the grounds for this appears extraordinary: that she did not ask for compensation from her husband for his share of accommodation in Adelaide, even though the hotels charge exactly the same price whether one person or two persons occupy the room!

We still face a political culture where scandal can be raised at any time, where because of the suspicion of corruption exaggerated details are seen as major wrongdoing, where Ministers are often left to hang, and where Latvia’s leaders show poor judgement on who to support and for what reason.

The year 2012 in Latvia has been characterised by two opposed and seemingly disconnected tendencies – on the one hand, despite all stories of economic gloom, poverty and emigration, the Latvian economy sits as the most positive in Europe, with growth of over 5% per annum, which is likely to continue well into the future.

On the other hand, we have had a year of bitter social division, continuing aggressive attacks on the government and the state, and a string of political or administrative disasters.

In many ways the political environment in 2012 has become even more toxic and fragmented than in previous years. The signal event here was the referendum on Russian as a second official language on February 18, which despite its failure has been followed by threats of another referendum to give citizenship to all residents, and a relentless campaign to increase the influence of the Russian language, and Russian values more generally, into the Latvian polity.

However, almost equally debilitating has been a series of political stalemates on critical issues affecting the society and democratic institutions. In the aftermath of the referendum, a desire to reform the referendum process (which had made it too easy to bring controversial issues to a referendum) has itself wallowed in political differences, with even coalition partners for a long time disagreeing on what should be the new norms of conducting referenda.

Meanwhile, the attempt to bring about another referendum on granting citizenship to all permanent residents in Latvia was able to gather the required 10,000 signatures to force the Central Electoral Commission to move to the next stage of wider signature gathering, but after gathering constitutional advice from all sides the Commission has decided not to take this next step. Bitterly criticised by the advocates of the referendum, this issue is likely to end up in a long drawn-out legal process, no doubt all the way up to European courts.

Proponents of the two referenda have not been idle on other fronts. The obnoxious Vladimir Linderman, a non-citizen himself but chief protagonist for the language referendum and now leader of the nascent National-Bolshevik oriented Native Tongue Party (Dzimtā valoda), continues to preach separatism and Russian dominance, focusing now on demanding greater ‘autonomy’ for the Eastern province of Latgale, the heavily russified area where a majority voted yes to having Russian as an official language. His open attacks on the Latvian state continue, and in the future we will no doubt witness a further fight: he has applied for Latvian citizenship, a move that perhaps will also end up in the courts.

Yet referenda and national issues are not the only ones of political import. The government has also been bogged down in issues that should otherwise not be highly politically controversial. The desire to reform Latvia’s poorly organised higher education system (with multiple institutions teaching similar courses) has led to a long-drawn out stalemate, with months of argument confusing the society, raising claims of corruption, and leaving potential students perplexed. A review was made of no less than 53 higher learning institutions (of which 19 are universities) – an extraordinary number for such a small country as Latvia – finding many overlapping and poorly performing courses, but this assessment project has itself been accused of being corrupted. Education Minister Roberts Ķīlis wants to sensibly rationalise this system, but he has also raised ire with a few of his side suggestions – such as having all teaching in universities in English or another EU language, bringing fierce rebukes from many in his own coalition. 

And in another stellar performance, a public-private deal to mount speed radar detection equipment on Latvia’s roads also ended in farce as the private company was unable to roll out the equipment, which sometimes was also faulty where it was installed; the basis of the deal – that profits for the company and tax revenues for the government would be greater the more infringements were detected – led to this downward spiral.

These incidents attest not only to political ineptitude but even more so to administrative and organisational weaknesses that increasingly worry Latvian citizenry: that any useful policy will be mired in corruption and/or administrative incompetence. For all his economic acumen, to which we return below, Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, with his reticent character and technocratic persona does not seem able to sustain reform where needed – plans come out talking about combatting the shadow economy (estimated at being up to one-third of the overall economy), or combatting tax evasion, or bringing transparency to contract or administrative proposals, but they often seem not to be realised.

Former Foreign Minister and European Parliament deputy Georgs Andrejevs, reflecting on this, claimed many useful political initiatives were constantly ‘torpedoed’ by a resisting bureaucracy. On this same theme, 2012 also marks the end of an era for Latvia’s Chief Auditor, Inguna Sudraba, who in the past 8 years has uncovered often stupendous corruption and shortcomings in state institutions, but many of her recommendations have not been pursued by government, and only a few of the corrupt parties have been brought to account. Sudraba, whose statutory term now ends, has been urged by many to form her own party and enter politics.

And finally on the political front: for those Latvians watching their country from the outside, 2012 brought some rude shocks, this time from President Andris Bērziņš. In September he reflected on the end of the term for another outstanding civil servant, Jānis Kažociņš, head of Latvia’s main security apparatus, the Constitution Defence Bureau [Satversmes aizsarzības birojs – SAB]. Bērziņš said that the next candidate for this position should be a ‘Latvian from Latvia’; Kažociņš grew up in the UK where he was engaged in security agencies there as well, and this assertion by Bērziņš was denounced by another ‘overseas’ Latvian, ex-President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga as discriminatory. To endear himself even more to overseas Latvians, Bērziņš’ National Independence Day speech for them on November 18 was drab, hesitant, unconvincing, with worrying signs of early dementia as much as incompetence.

And yet in the midst of this, Latvia’s economy continues to recover and grow. GDP grew by an impressive 5.6% in 2012, continuing the 2011 performance, with estimates of again greater than 5% growth in 2013. Latvian exporters have developed new markets, both within and beyond the EU, and there are the first hints that consumer confidence is returning to a still largely economically battered population. And visitors to Riga in particular will have noticed new enterprises and economic enthusiasm.

There is no great prospect of seeing any early return of the estimated 200,000 people who have left Latvia to look for better economic prospects elsewhere, but this continuing growth is becoming significant in an otherwise economically becalmed – or worse – Europe. Dombrovskis has worked very hard to bring about this situation and avert the fate of several Mediterranean EU members, but unless he can bring the same degree of control and leadership to the many political troubles still apparent in Latvia, the economic promise will appear to be little felt and little appreciated by an ever more divided Latvian society.