August 2006

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LATVIA WON'T GRANT CITIZENSHIP IF LANGUAGE TESTS ARE FAILED

August 2006 - The Latvian government introduced on August 8 new laws for granting citizenship. According to the laws, those who fail a Latvian language test three times won't be granted citizenship.

Almost 20 per cent of the country's population cannot vote, cannot hold most types of public posts and requires a visa to visit other EU countries, except for Estonia, Lithuania and Denmark. Such group is made up of 450,000 people, mostly Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. They have been considered "non-citizens" to emphasize the illegality of the Soviet occupation, which lasted for almost 50 years (1991) and which has never been recognized by most Western countries. During Soviet rule, thousands of Latvians were deported to labour camps in Siberia, while hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians settled in Latvia.

Last June the Latvian parliament rejected amendments to the citizenship law that would broaden the rights for non-citizens to obtain citizenship. The amendments were proposed by the leftist alliance For Human Rights in United Latvia. Under the draft proposal, all residents who had completed secondary school after Sept. 1, 1999 or had finished schools where at least half of the curriculum was in the Latvian language would have the right to obtain citizenship.

A second EU country with a similar category of non-citizens is neighbouring Estonia.