Baltic states prepare for EU accession

• From: Vol 3, Issue 3 (March 2002)
• Category: General
• Region: Europe
• Country: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Accession to the European Union is forcing the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to bring their environmental regulations into line with those of the EU. European funding and grants – which allowed substantial investment in the water sector throughout the 1990s – could conceivably finance most of the requirements. However, such investments are not likely to be sustainable without accompanying reform of the water sector.

All three Baltic countries have made steady progress improving the standard of their environment since the fall of the Soviet Union. Governments have tended to use co-financing from a range of sources to pay for investment programmes and projects.

In Latvia, the main state financial source for environmental infrastructure projects has been the Public Investment Programme (PIP). This has been ...