Lithuania, together with Latvia and Estonia, joined the European Union on May 1, 2004. Although the membership negotiations were incredibly fast, officials involved in the process recall Western Europe perceiving the Baltics as potentially problematic because of Russia’s neighbourhood.
Estonia was invited to start the EU accession negotiations as early as 1997, while Latvia and Lithuania had to wait until 1999. This was due to the better economic, political, and administrative situation in Estonia.
According to Stefano Braghiroli, a lecturer at the Johan Skytte Institute of the University of Tartu, Estonia invested all its efforts to accelerate Euro-Atlantic integration after regaining independence.
“In my opinion, the political elite in Estonia was more united and, in general, more determined to undertake reforms,” Braghiroli told LRT.lt.
The ruling parties in Estonia were pro-European at the time, while Eurosceptics were pushed to the political margins.
According to Braghiroli, Tallinn also wanted to be a frontrunner and join the EU with the “first wave” of countries, while at the same time demonstrating its superiority over the other Baltic states.
“I think there was definitely a syndrome, which has not completely disappeared even today, that we wanted to be the first in class, the best pupils when it came to the EU question,” he said.
Latvia, meanwhile, saw EU accession as a common issue for the Baltics because of its geographical situation. According to Žaneta Ozoliņa, a politics professor at the University of Latvia, Estonia was able to cooperate with Finland and Lithuania with Poland, while Latvia hoped for support from its two Baltic neighbours.
In Latvia, one of the biggest problems in the process of joining both the EU and NATO was the influence of oligarchs. At that time, three Latvian oligarchs were active in politics – Aivars Lembergs, Andris Šķēle, and Ainars Šlesers.
They were all closely involved in the country’s privatisation process. Lembergs was the mayor of Ventspils and developed transport and oil supply businesses, while Šlesers co-founded the Rimi supermarket chain.
According to Ozoliņa, both Brussels and Washington were aware of the problems in Riga, so one of Latvia’s main objectives was to reduce its dependence on these oligarchs.
“Legislation was passed, and a special service was set up to inform the public and investigate corruption,” she said.
But despite the efforts of all the Baltic states to catch up with EU standards, Western European countries, especially France and Germany, felt that the accession of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to the EU could lead to even greater disagreements with Russia.
“I talked to a lot of legislators, and the Baltic states were seen as problematic. Many Western European countries had to accept their EU membership, but if they hadn’t succeeded, nobody in Europe would have been too sad about it,” said Braghiroli of the University of Tartu.
Russia’s propaganda hand
Russia did not directly oppose the Baltic states’ EU membership, but it did raise issues that they had to address. Estonia had to deal with unratified state borders with Russia, and Lithuania had difficulties with the Kaliningrad transit.
Tallinn and Riga also faced the long-standing issue of the Russian-speaking minorities. A relatively large proportion of the Russian-speaking population in these countries did not have citizenship. Although not strictly an EU issue, it was linked to the Copenhagen criteria for accession that ensure the “stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities”.
“Russia thought that with such a large number of non-citizens, the EU would not open its doors to Latvia [...]. There was a lot of activity at the time, but not with the slogan that Russia was against Latvia’s EU membership. It was pushing the blame onto others with clean hands,” Ozoliņa said.
For many years, Russian-speaking Latvians and Latvians themselves had also been watching Russian channels that reflected an anti-European narrative. Russia successfully manipulated the problems that were sensitive for Latvia at the time and exploited various disaffected groups.
“When Latvia wanted to introduce bilingual education, with 60 percent of activities in Latvian and the remaining 40 percent in Russian, there were big protests, students took to the streets, but you cannot do that without money,” Ozoliņa said.
Estonia did not experience such large protests, but there was also a propaganda battle. The Eurosceptic Rahvaliit party actively distributed anti-European posters.
However, it was the referendums that highlighted the Russian-speaking minorities’ distrust of the EU. In Latvia, the referendum saw more than 32 percent of the population vote against EU membership. Most of the negative votes were cast in the areas densely populated by the Russian-speakers on Latvia’s border with Russia and Belarus. In Estonia, the results were similar, with more than 33 percent voting against EU membership.
But thanks to a relatively high turnout and the support of more than half of the voters, all the Baltic states secured their EU membership. Most of the Baltic population saw EU membership as a guarantee of security in the broadest sense – energy, economic, and democratic.
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