Latvians begin voting on EU entry

Latvians began voting today in the last referendum of the 10 candidate countries seeking membership in the European Union, seeking to cement the country’s ties to the west after years of occupation.

Voters in the ex-Soviet republic of 2.4 million people are likely to approve membership, but not by the decisive margins neighbouring Estonia and Lithuania did, observers say.

Along with Estonia, Latvia has been pegged as one of the most sceptical candidates for EU-membership. Most Latvian opinion polls show voters in favour of membership – with between 55% and 65% of those questioned saying they would vote yes.

“My husband and I voted yes for our grandchildren,” Mudite Kremere, a Riga doctor, said when leaving a polling station shortly after voting started. “Latvia is a small country. We’re not like Norway, which has oil, so we need to be in the European Union.”

More than 50% of voters who cast ballots in the last parliamentary election must vote in order for the results to stand – 497,000 Latvians. There are 1.4 million eligible voters and more than enough are expected to cast ballots.

Latvia’s government and the business community strongly back EU entry, touting it as a way to ensure the political and economic stability in the Baltic Sea state, which regained independence from Moscow barely a decade ago amid the 1991 Soviet collapse.

But critics contend membership will lead to higher prices and unsettled change for the country’s residents.

“The Latvian president and politicians are asking Latvians to accept higher prices and unemployment,” said Normunds Grostins, director of a local think tank. “I think what we’ll see today is most small businessmen coming here will vote no.”

The pre-referendum campaign has been low-key, with few visible advertisements on streets across the country. On the eve of the vote, some activists handed out balloons emblazoned with blue EU flags in parks around Riga, Latvia’s capital.

Latvians say they also hope EU membership will help smooth another irritant with Russia: the status of native Russian speakers, who make up more than a third of Latvia’s population.

Russia has complained repeatedly that Latvian Russians are mistreated, noting that many are denied Latvian citizenship because they cannot pass the government-mandated Latvian language tests.