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Latvia is depopulating: for many years, the number of deaths has exceeded the number of births, and since 2000, around 315,000 people have left the country in search of work, a huge number for such a small country with a population of only 2 million people, since it means that around 13% of the total population left the country in the last 20 years. Is Latvia at risk of disappearing?
Just ahead of Bulgaria, Latvia ranks second to last on the list of European Union countries losing the most population. Unlike its Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Estonia which present more encouraging figures.
“Every year, some 5,000 people living abroad return to Latvia,” says Inta Miriena, director of the Center for Diaspora and Migration at the University of Riga and who studies the Latvian depopulation phenomenon. However, this number does not compare with the 14,000 citizens on average who emigrate each year from their country. Faced with this negative balance, depopulation becomes evident.
According to Eurostat forecasts, in 2050 only 1.3 million inhabitants will remain in the country.
Most of them are young and academically trained people, which makes the country less and less interesting in the eyes of investors and businessmen, as companies seek to operate where there really is a workforce.
Thousands decide to go abroad each year and the few returnees do not compensate for the emigration. Meanwhile, the phenomenon continues: deserted towns, abandoned neighborhoods and empty schools. But in recent months, many Latvians have returned to the country due to the Covid-19 pandemic and also because of Brexit.
This recent wave of returns caused by Covid-19 and Brexit and that still cannot be quantified, will it be synonymous with a hope of repopulation? Maybe it’s too early to tell.
30 years after its independence from the Soviet Union and 17 years after joining the European Union, Latvia faces a challenge that no one could have foreseen.
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