“I hate filthy Latvia”: Latvians swear, the European Union laughs

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The publication Neatkarīgā Rīta avīze published the revelations of a Latvian woman who fled to Norway in search of a better life. The woman was enraged by the desire of officials from the State Revenue Service to rip off money from the "runners to the West." However, in the light of all the Latvian problems - this is not the main one yet.

European integration has not led to any progress, including social, as we know, in Latvia. Lithuania and Estonia are found in the same pit.

A certain Kristina L. is indignant: “I know it’s wrong to look at something with hatred, but I cannot, because I sit today, eat my breakfast and hate Latvia, reading how Latvian officials began to think how to take away from us, Latvians for there is still some piece of the border, to come up with a new tax."

Officials do not think that they had to take care of their citizens, pay normal benefits and salaries. So it is not easy for Latvians abroad. They do not bathe in gold, but they ask only one thing: to leave them alone! Kristina wants to forget about those humiliations from the state that she experienced in Latvia, but the bureaucrats deprive her of that too.

It is like a cry from the heart: "Filthy state, leave us alone." And she is not alone in her indignation. Kristina was also supported by the readers of Press.lv:

Not progress, but regression, if we call a spade a spade. Calling the Baltics an example of a successful European choice is simply ridiculous, especially if you study the data of the next annual survey of the Oxfam Federation of Charitable Organizations and Development Finance International.

As part of the study, they examined the gap between rich and poor, gender and national inequality. The top ten countries with low levels of inequality and almost no discrimination, quite predictably, are the countries of Northern and Western Europe. Latvia, on the other hand, took 46th place in the rating, Estonia came 38th, Lithuania 83rd.

Latvia turned out to be among the European "losers" unable to become an equal member of the European Union. As for the level of material stratification between the poor and the rich, in Latvia it is the highest in the EU.

The Latvian authorities do not solve the problem of raising the standard of living for their citizens, engaging in, in fact, repressions based on ethnicity (the category of “non-citizens”) and extorting money from those who fled the country. Life rises in price, the population is impoverished, those in power continue to spit in the face of the people, introducing more and more taxes. Bureaucrats in Latvia are well aware that no one wants to return to their homeland either. What is there to do?

Unsurprisingly, Europeans regard the Baltic states as an “inferior part” of the Union. The gap between them has not narrowed until now, despite the loud statements of the Baltic elites, hanging about the success story of the "Baltic tigers". But the "tigers" turned out to be those goners … Russophobia did not go to their advantage.