In Latvia, half of the leadership positions are held by women, and the country also attracts startups like a magnet. What measures lie behind these outstanding achievements? Interview with H. E. Jurijs Pogrebņaks was the guest at the Ludovika Ambassadors’ Forum on May 6th.
Mr. Ambassador, you presented your credentials to the Hungarian President in September 2024. What are your first impressions?
Actually, I’ve been in Hungary a couple of times before, both on private and business visits. This is my fifth country of diplomatic service and I am very happy to be here and to see and learn about your beautiful country, history and people. I am historian, so I have read a lot about Hungary before, but when you are there, you see the country from a different perspective.
What areas of Hungarian-Latvian bilateral relations do you plan to focus on?
As for my plans for the next years, Latvia’s most important priority is strengthening our national security and the rules-based international order. This year we are the candidate country for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, the elections will take part in June. Currently we are the only nominee from the Eastern European group and looking forward to be elected. The Russian aggression in Ukraine brought our country to the current status: we have to spend more on defense, on national security and to fulfil our commitments as a NATO member as well. So this year we already allocate more than 3.66% of our GDP to defense and have a plan to increase this to 4% by the end of the year, with the goal of reaching 5% in the near future. We are encouraging our allies and partner countries to follow this path and increase the budget, the defense expenditures. This is the first priority. The second is of course, promoting the economic relations. And the third priority is working with people, both Latvian nationals abroad, including those in Hungary, and fostering people-to-people contacts through cultural exchange between our two countries.
We are truly thankful to the Hungarian National Air Force for patrolling the Baltic airspace regularly. The next rotation will begin this August, when the Hungarian Gripens will patrol Baltic sea. On the economy side, we have a reasonable trade turnover of around 300 million between our two countries. We are looking forward to working more on the development of the operations in the new technologies so that we can promote both our investments and our cooperation on common research projects as well with Hungary. The main priorities are information technologies, communication technologies, 5G development, artificial intelligence, and the drone developments. The other field of the economic operations might be chemical production. Both countries also have developed pharmaceutical sector.
You also mentioned people-to-people culture. What do you mean by this?
Last week, we had two choirs visiting here to attend one of the international choir competition in Budapest. This is very important for us as a singing nation. 35 years ago we reclaimed our independence from the Soviet Union. So we call this peaceful process the Singing Revolution.
Our national folk song singing traditions have always meant a very strong support for our independence and the restoration of it. We try to show this in Hungary as well: we established direct contact between our operetta theatres, and we are looking forward to further cooperation in the musical sphere. Looking forward also to some hundred musicians to participate in Latvian Opera Festival this summer. In addition, we are working to enhance cooperation between our national libraries this year. The year2025 is particularly important for us, as we are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the first book published in Latvia.
Apart from Hungary, you are also accredited as ambassador to three neighboring countries: Slovenia, Montenegro and Croatia. What difficulties does a non-resident ambassador have to face in terms of maintaining contacts and operations? How different are these countries from a Latvian perspective?
Fortunately we are all in the same group, members of NATO and as Montenegro is a candidate country of the European Union, we support its aspiration to become a new member of the EU. We are strong supporters of the general enlargement process. This is one of the best projects Europe has had so far. I have to mention here that we in Latvia host the NATO Multinational Brigade, which is a part of the NATO Eastern Flank Defense Program which launched in the NATO Summit. And we are hosting the 14 nations including Latvians themselves in Latvia close to Riga. So it’s a coalition run by the Canadian forces and altogether we have around 4,000 NATO contributing troops in Latvia. Among them we have the biggest Canadian contingent and then we have a battalion of Swedish troops as well as troops from Albania, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, North Macedonia participating in this mission. Altogether, we have been very thankful to them for sending troops and supporting our independence and security in the region.
Latvia is the chairman of the Baltic Council of Ministers in 2025. Please explain to our readers about the cooperation of the Baltic States and the system of the rotating chairmanship?
The cooperation among Baltic States is traditional and based on our common interests and goals in foreign and security policy, the economic development of the region, and membership of the European Union and NATO. We have intensive cooperation on many different levels among the Baltic ethnic countries. In fact, it started already from the beginning of our independence in the ‘30s and continued during the ‘80s with cooperation outside the Baltic States. This led to the Baltic Way- the huge action of 23rd of August 1989 when we marked the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which brought territories of the Baltic States under the Russian-Soviet occupation. We united the Live People Chain: this emotionally was a good start of our regaining independence. From this time the civil cooperation was established as well as the politic: the Baltic Council of Ministers was established in June of 1994 to coordinate the policies and cooperation on all levels of executive facilities, not only between the government ministries. The presidency of this cooperation is rotating on a yearly basis.
What are this Council’s priorities?
The first one is security: we restored a couple of years ago the compulsory military service. The second priority is continuous support to Ukraine: since 2022 we provided around 0.7 from our GDP incomes to Ukraine for support. And the third one, which is very important for us is improving regional connectivity, strengthening energy security. Since 2023 we have been independent from Russian gas. We are purchasing mostly LNG. We have big underground gas facility storage in the territory of Latvia which can serve the needs of the Baltic States for a couple of years. There was another important step for us this January, when we cut ourselves from the Russian electricity grid and connected to the European electricity grid. Another huge connectivity project for us is Rail Baltica, connecting five European Union countries – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and indirectly also Finland.
For Hungary, the cooperation with Hungarians outside Hungary is an important policy. How is the diaspora policy of Latvia?
Less than two million people currently live in Latvia, and around 400,000 live abroad. The largest communities can be found in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Germany, Australia, as well as in Ireland and even in Brazil and Argentina. These communities are quite strong and very active.
There have been three waves of Latvian diaspora. The first wave took place around 100 years ago due to economic reasons. After the Second World War, there was another big wave of emigration when the Soviet occupation followed the German occupation of Latvian territory. The third wave came after the 2008-2009 economic crisis. We have a special diaspora law – a program supporting Latvian communities around the world. This law was adopted in 2019 and its purpose is to help maintain and strengthen these connections. For the past few years we have also been developing practical plans to support returning migration.
Since 2013 we have organized the World Latvian Economics and Innovation Forum where Latvians from around the world gather in the capital to share experience and promote economic development and innovation. We have similar activities for Latvians working in international organisations. So, we try to keep them very closely connected with Latvia.
I watched the image film about Latvia, and it raised several questions in my mind. It was mentioned that 95% of the population speaks a foreign language. Is there any data on what percentage speaks English? Is there a mandatory foreign language taught in schools? I assume Russian used to be that language for a long time.
Yes, historically, for the older generations, Russian the number one foreign language. It was compulsory in school. That’s why 91.3% could speak Russian including young people. As the second foreign language, 64% of population could speak English. With a new generation, English has become the number one foreign language, while 15% can communicate in German. But, for example, 100% of start-up employees are able to communicate in English.
For me it’s very strange because it was also compulsory in my childhood, in our school years until the high school level, but nobody speaks Russian in Hungary.
In the framework of the Russification Policy during the Soviet times they tried to make Russian language compulsory in the everyday life to surpass national languages and traditions. We still have a significant Russian minority in Latvia – around 23%, so a large portion of the population still speaks Russian.
However, for the new generation, a European Union language as first language is now compulsory in schools. And starting from the fourth grade, it’s compulsory to have a second foreign language, too. The aim is that at least until the graduation people learn at least two foreign languages. English is not a problem for those below 30.
“We are a playground for ambition”—this phrase also appears in the film. Is this spirit also fostered within the public education system?
Being a small nation with nearly 50% of its territory covered by forest, we also focus on new technologies: ITC, healthcare infrastructure, green energy, bioenergy. That’s why, during studies we start to emphasize the fields we see as the most promising for our future – the ones that bring additional value: information communication technologies, smart material technologies, engineering systems, biomedicine, medical technologies, biopharmacy, smart energy and knowledge intensive economy.
This is how the famous animated movie Flow came to life. It started as a small project with a simple idea, created by a group of the creative people – and it grew to the level of receiving the best world awards in the field of cinema. It is very good that we are members of the EU: we cooperate, we exchange experience. Flow is a joint production of Latvia and the Belgian and French colleagues, that shows how creative people from the European Union can work together and achieve the highest levels of international awards and recognition. Hopefully it will work in different spheres as well and we will have a lot of interesting projects.
The film also revealed that half of all leadership positions are held by women. Latvia has also one of the highest rates of women in science, technology and engineering, with 51% of scientists being women.
I think this is because we invest in the education mostly. Women choose more and more modern sciences and continue their studies even after the graduating. We have had programs with South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt, Fiji, Uzbekistan. We have established the Riga Tech Girls, it shows how women can develop the business part of the innovation technologies, making their own companies and spread this knowledge around the world. We don’t deny the women to get to be promoted.
Are there any special governmental measures to help women in the labour market?
We don’t need that because we don’t have institutional barriers to women to join any part of the society business and then lead it. That’s just natural for us.
Back to the promotion film, Latvia clearly embraces innovation—it shows also in the uniqueness of the short film itself. The country is said to be very startup-friendly. What governmental measures have been implemented to support this?
We have a startup ecosystem and a very good legislation to attract startup companies to come to Latvia. We have startup visa program for the non-EU founders. This is a special incentive for those staying up to three years to establish an innovative business. Then we also have a very attractive tax policy with 0% of individual income tax and very low social tax, and startup friendly stock options policies meaning that the startup sets up the price, no normal valuation required. One year minimum wasting period favorable taxes when reselling the shares. We have also 11 state-sponsored incubators just for development of IT technologies around the country and a number of accelerators. The biggest deal so far has been an international company called Printful which is a unicorn. Founded in Riga, it has offices, fulfilment centers and partner facilities all over the world, from Texas to Barcelona.
