Author: ln

Health Literacy in Latvia: A Public Health Challenge Shaped by Socio-economic Inequality

Posted on June 22, 2026 | Policy Brief

Latvia faces a serious health literacy challenge: many adults struggle to access, understand, evaluate, and apply health information in everyday decisions. The weakest domain is health promotion, suggesting that many people find it especially difficult to use information that helps maintain and improve health before illness occurs. Health literacy is unequally distributed across society: people with lower income and lower perceived social status are at greater risk of inadequate health literacy. Education shows a weaker and less consistent association than expected. The findings show that health literacy is not only a separate competence, but also one of the pathways through which socio-economic inequality translates into unequal health outcomes. Improving health literacy should therefore be treated as both public health and equity priority.  Recommended actions include targeted support for socio-economically disadvantaged groups and systematic integration of health literacy approaches into health communication and education.

Health literacy matters because modern health systems require people to access, understand, appraise, and apply health-related information. In everyday life, this means being able to find trustworthy advice, interpret instructions, assess risks and benefits, and make decisions about treatment, prevention, and health-promoting behaviours.

International evidence shows that low health literacy is associated with poorer health outcomes, weaker prevention, less effective use of health services, and higher pressure on health care systems (Berkman et al., 2011; Zheng et al., 2018). In Latvia, evidence on population health literacy is scarce. To date, the closest population‑level estimate of general health literacy in Latvia comes from a 2022 pilot study, which reported that 79% of the population had below‑average health literacy (Gatulytė et al., 2022) – one of the lowest observed health literacy levels among the research done in EU (Sørensen et al., 2015).

This brief examines evidence on health literacy in Latvia and discusses why it matters for public health and health equity. Drawing on a population survey, it highlights key patterns in health literacy, shows how these are linked to socio-economic inequalities, and proposes policy directions for making health information easier to access, understand, and use.

Evidence Base

The analysis is based on survey data from the project “Health Literacy Study in Latvia: Levels, Burdens and Interventions”, funded by the Latvian Council of Science. The sample is representative of the Latvian population with respect to age, gender, nationality, and place of residence, and includes 2,007 respondents aged 18-75. Data was collected in November 2025.

The survey contained 89 questions in five sections covering demographic characteristics, socio-economic situation, self-reported health status and behaviour, health literacy, and health resource utilisation. Health literacy is measured with the HLS-EU-Q47 questionnaire, a validated instrument used in Europe to assess and compare health literacy levels across countries (Pelikan et al., 2019). The instrument yields a health literacy index on a 0-50 scale. According to the original methodology, the index values are classified into four levels: inadequate (0–25), problematic (>25–33), sufficient (>33–42), and excellent (>42–50) (Pelikan et al., 2019).

Low Health Literacy Is Widespread

Health literacy levels in Latvia are concerning. The average health literacy index score is 29.78, with most respondents clustered near the cut‑off point between problematic and sufficient health literacy. Overall, 75.64% of respondents have limited health literacy: 20.53% fall into the inadequate category and 55.11% into the problematic category. Only 19.73% demonstrate sufficient health literacy, and 4.63% excellent health literacy.

These results are close to the earlier Latvian pilot study, where limited health literacy was estimated at 79% (Gatulyte et al., 2022). Latvian results compare unfavourably with European evidence, where inadequate and problematic health literacy levels were substantially lower – the average across the surveyed European countries is approximately 12% inadequate and 35% problematic health literacy (Pelikan et al, 2014), with the highest levels of insufficient health literacy reported at about 60% in Bulgaria and Spain.

Figure 1: Overall levels of health literacy in Latvia.

Source: Author’s calculations based on the Health Literacy Study in Latvia survey, 2026.

Where the Difficulties Are the Greatest

Across the three health literacy domains (health promotion, disease prevention, and healthcare), the most pronounced difficulties appear in health promotion. In this domain, 34.03% of respondents report inadequate health literacy, and 41.85% problematic health literacy. This suggests that people find it especially difficult to engage with information about behaviours that improve or maintain health, such as nutrition, physical activity, and other health-promoting practices.

Disease prevention and healthcare show comparatively similar patterns, although disease prevention has a slightly higher share of excellent health literacy than healthcare. This may indicate that respondents are somewhat more confident in using information about preventive behaviours than in using information related to illness or medical treatment.

Figure 2: Health literacy by domain.

Source: Author’s calculations based on the Health Literacy Study in Latvia survey, 2026.

The competency-level (access, understand, appraise, apply) results are also important for policy. The Latvian population reports the greatest difficulty in applying health information, with 27.25% showing inadequate health literacy skills. Accessing health information is another weak point, with 25.81% showing inadequate and 44.89% problematic skills. Understanding information is the strongest competency, with the highest shares of sufficient and excellent health literacy among the four competencies.

Figure 3: Health literacy by competency.

Source: Author’s calculations based on the Health Literacy Study in Latvia survey, 2026.

Socio-economic Inequality Shapes Health Literacy

Examining a wide set of potential determinants of health literacy – including age, sex, place of residence, ethnicity, language proficiency, partnership status, household size, education, labour status, income, and self-assessed social status – bivariate analysis identifies income, social status, and English proficiency as positively associated with health literacy, while age is negatively associated with health literacy.

Multivariate analysis further shows that income and social status are the most consistent and statistically significant determinants. Social status emerges as the strongest predictor, and income as the second. These findings indicate that the ability to process and use health information is unequally distributed across social and economic groups.

Education does not show the statistically significant relationship that is commonly observed in international literature (Pelikan et al., 2014).

Language proficiency is consistently associated with health literacy. Latvian, Russian, and English proficiency are all statistically significant determinants, with English proficiency showing the strongest association. Language skills shape the ability to engage with health information for all age groups, but English proficiency may be linked with younger cohorts and with other skills, such as digital skills, that were not directly measured in the study.

Health Literacy Is a Pathway into Health Inequality

Apart from assessing health literacy levels, it is also important to examine whether health literacy serves as a pathway through which socio-economic status influences health, as noted by Berete et al. (2024). The mediation analysis evaluates education, income, and social status in relation to self-assessed health status.

Figure 4: Results from the mediation analysis: decomposing the total effect of socio‑economic factors on self‑reported health into direct effects and indirect effects mediated by health literacy.

Source: Author’s calculations based on the Health Literacy Study in Latvia survey, 2026. Note: The x-axis, and therefore the bar length, shows the total effect of each socio-economic factor on self-reported health. Percentages on the right indicate the share of the association mediated by health literacy. The mediated effect is statistically significant at the 0.1% and 5% levels for income and social status, respectively, but reaches significance only at the 10% level for education.

Health literacy is found to be a partial mediator for all three socio-economic status indicators used (education, income and self-attributed social status). It accounts for 8.42% of the association between education and health status, 22.41% of the association between income and health status, and 21.71% of the association between social status and health status. The mediating effects are strongest for income and social status, reinforcing the conclusion that health literacy is closely connected to socio-economic inequalities, while level of education is not as strongly related.

What the Findings Imply

In Latvia, health literacy, the ability to navigate health information and make informed health decisions, should be a public health concern. Limited health literacy is widespread and affects three out of four individuals in the population. It resonates with the current performance of Latvia in terms of different key health indicators – life expectancy lags the OECD average by 5.5 years (OECD, 2025), preventable and treatable mortalities both remain very high, and the self-rated health status is low.

The weakest competencies are in accessing and applying health information, making them the areas that need immediate action. Without adequate access to information, other stages of information processing lose their relevance. The apply-information competency area shows the highest level of inadequate and the lowest level of excellent health literacy, meaning the respondents have trouble using health information in their everyday life.

Further, health literacy is socially patterned, affecting especially lower-income and lower social status individuals, and partly mediates the link between socio-economic status and health status.

Hence, improving health literacy is relevant both for individual behaviour change and for reducing health inequalities. Policies that make health information easier to find, easier to assess, and easier to use may be especially important for lower-income and lower-status groups, who face the greatest risk of limited health literacy.

Policy Recommendations

The evidence points to a need for targeted interventions to improve health literacy in Latvia. The following policy interventions are proposed as priorities for policy development.

  1. Shift from providing information to making information usable

Because access and application are among the weakest competencies, health communication should be redesigned around practical usability. It should be evaluated if there are sufficient and accessible public health materials. Information should help people understand what to do next, not only describe risks or services. General practitioners (family doctors) may play key role in the information management. Opportunities for the use of Artificial intelligence in information flow and easy-to-understand, short, animated videos should be developed.

  1. Target socio-economically vulnerable groups

Income and social status are the strongest determinants of health literacy. Interventions should therefore prioritise people with lower income and lower social status. This could include community-based counselling, support through primary care, cooperation with municipalities and social services, and tailored outreach in settings where vulnerable groups already receive services.

  1. Strengthen health literacy through targeted education and lifelong learning

The weak role of formal education in the Latvian data indicates that formal schooling alone does not currently translate into higher health literacy. Policy efforts should therefore prioritise targeted skill development across the life course, rather than relying on general educational attainment. Strengthening health literacy within school curricula remains important, but equal emphasis is needed on adult learning and community‑based programmes that build practical competencies: locating reliable information, critically evaluating health claims, navigating digital health tools, and applying health advice in everyday contexts. Enhancing English‑language proficiency—particularly written comprehension among adults—may further expand access to high‑quality health information beyond Latvian‑language sources, supporting more equitable engagement with health guidance.

Conclusion

Health literacy in Latvia remains a significant public health concern. Limited competencies are widespread, with many individuals struggling particularly to access and apply health information – difficulties that are closely linked to poorer health outcomes and patterned by socio‑economic inequalities. Strengthening health literacy should therefore be viewed as an integral component of broader strategies to improve population health. This need is especially pronounced among socio‑economically vulnerable groups, who consistently demonstrate lower health literacy levels and, consequently, worse health outcomes.

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the Latvian Council of Science project “Health Literacy Study in Latvia: Levels, Burdens and Interventions”, project No. Izp-2024/1-0543.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Towards a Russian Internet?

Posted on June 15, 2026 | Policy Brief

The internet enables information and opinions to flow rapidly and at low cost, including across national borders. It allows individuals to coordinate collective action on an unprecedented scale. Many authoritarian governments, therefore, seek to control the online information environment. This policy brief examines the evolution of internet control in Russia and documents how censorship and network disruptions have intensified since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Drawing on three complementary datasets—Access Now’s Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project (STOP), the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) initiative, and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)—we document a sharp increase in internet disruptions, platform blocking, and website censorship in Russia since 2022. We argue that this expansion of censorship was enabled by a longer-term shift from a relatively decentralized system of internet regulation towards a centralised infrastructure capable of monitoring, filtering, and controlling internet traffic at scale.

The Online War

The Russian government has been fighting its war against Ukraine on multiple fronts: aside from the battlefield in Ukraine, there is also an online front at home. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kremlin has sought to control how the war is presented to the Russian public. Within weeks of the invasion, Russia blocked Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and restricted access to numerous foreign and independent media outlets. In the years that followed, restrictions expanded to include VPN services and specific features of messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

These measures are not isolated events. Rather, they represent the latest stage in a broader effort to control the Russian internet. Over the past decade, Russia has gradually built the legal and technical infrastructure needed to monitor, filter, and disrupt online communications. The war in Ukraine has revealed the extent of these capabilities and accelerated their deployment.

This brief examines how internet control in Russia has evolved in recent years. We discuss the challenges of measuring internet censorship and analyse evidence from three complementary datasets. Together, these measures show a sharp increase in internet disruptions, platform restrictions, and censorship since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Why Control the Internet?

The internet has transformed the way information is produced, shared, and consumed. It allows information and opinions to spread rapidly at low cost, including across national borders, and enables individuals to coordinate collective action on an unprecedented scale. For an authoritarian government, the internet allows the spread of information that contradicts official narratives and can facilitate political opposition. The role of social media in mobilising protests during the Arab Spring highlighted the power of the internet.

In response, many authoritarian governments have sought to exert greater control over the internet. China is the most advanced example of state control over the online information environment. Through its “Great Firewall”, the Chinese government controls access to foreign information and platforms, while influencing and monitoring domestic online activity through censorship, regulation, and the cooperation of domestic technology companies.

Russia has historically taken a different approach. Until recently, Russians retained access to many Western platforms, and internet censorship was implemented in a relatively decentralized manner by internet service providers. Rather than constructing a separate internet from the outset, Russia sought to control information flows while remaining integrated with the global internet.

Authoritarian Trade-offs

Why might the Russian government have followed this light-touch approach, and why change course now? The literature in economics and political science describes two trade-offs an authoritarian government faces when deciding how much control to exert over the internet.

The first is economic. Describing the ‘dictator’s dilemma,’ Kedzie (1997) writes, “it may now be virtually impossible for any country to maintain an open economy for expansion while remaining closed to democratic ideas“. Estimates of the economic cost of internet shutdowns support this argument. One estimate suggests that government-imposed outages cost the global economy $19.7 billion in the year 2025 (Migliano 2026).

The second is informational. Egorov et al. (2009) argue that an authoritarian government that constrains free media and communication flows too aggressively cuts itself off from information required to govern effectively. Local bureaucrats have no incentive to perform in the absence of reliable independent monitoring. King et al. (2013) provide empirical evidence for this in the context of Chinese social media censorship. They find that censors allow (potentially informative) criticism of the government but specifically target posts that could give rise to collective action.

Controlling the narrative around a prolonged, costly war necessitates a greater level of intervention. The censorship strategies discussed below can be viewed through the lens of a government seeking new ways to navigate both trade-offs.

Tracking Internet Shutdowns

Identifying government-imposed internet shutdowns is challenging. Affected users will typically have no way of verifying the extent or true cause of an outage, and their ability to report it in real-time may itself be curtailed. As a result, organizations that monitor internet shutdowns use very different methodologies. In our brief, we will describe three of the most prominent publicly available datasets that attempt to track disruptions to internet services worldwide.

Access Now, a member of the #KeepItOn coalition, provides a publicly available dataset of internet shutdowns through its Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project (STOP). The distinguishing feature of STOP is that it establishes intent. It combines technical data on internet connectivity with either official government statements or information provided by informed insiders. STOP records various types of technical disruption: from full blackouts to throttling and partial service restrictions. However, a measured disruption of internet services is only recorded as a shutdown event if it can be traced back to deliberate government intervention with a high degree of confidence. The advantage of this approach is that one can be confident that each instance in the data reflects a deliberate government-induced shutdown. The limitation is that the dataset likely undercounts shutdowns in data-scarce or highly repressive environments where establishing intent is not always possible.

Figure 1 plots internet shutdowns in Russia, and for comparison, the FREE network member countries from 2016 to 2025. The chart is dominated by the sharp upward trend in Russia, starting in 2021, and accelerating after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There is also an increase in Ukraine after the invasion; which includes both Russian actions that disrupted connectivity and Ukrainian measures to block specific Russian platforms. Similarly, Latvia imposed nationwide blocks of two Russian platforms after the start of the invasion. The chart also shows the internet blackouts in Belarus amid widespread protests following the 2020 election.

Figure 1. Internet shutdown events in FREE Network countries (2016-2025)

Source: Access Now, KeepItOn STOP (2016-2025) and authors’ calculations.
Note: This chart shows the number of distinct intentional internet shutdown events active during each quarter in countries of the SIDA Free Network. (Sweden, Georgia, Moldova, and Poland are excluded from the graph because no shutdown events were recorded for them over this period.)  An internet shutdown is defined as an intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications, rendering them inaccessible or effectively unusable, for a specific population or within a location, often to exert control over the flow of information (Access Now, KIO). A shutdown event can result from third-party interventions rather than be intended by the country’s government.

Figure 2 uses the same dataset to illustrate which social media and online messaging platforms were most affected by the increase in government control of the internet in Russia. Relative to China, Russia used to exert only ‘light-touch’ control over the internet, as seen in the first panel of the figure. From 2016 to 2021, the social media and online messaging platforms in the chart were largely unaffected by shutdown events. The second panel shows that since early 2022, all of these platforms have experienced shutdown events, and in the case of Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram, there have been active blocks throughout the entire period.

Figure 2. Platform service disruptions in Russia (2016 – 2025)

Source:  Access Now, KeepItOn STOP Dataset (2016-2025) and authors’ calculations. Note: This graph details the platforms affected by internet shutdowns in Russia (See Figure 1). Each bar shows the percentage of days in the period when at least one shutdown event affected the platform in Russia.

As discussed, the STOP dataset likely undercounts internet shutdowns. We therefore evaluate whether alternative measures show the same upward trend for Russia.

Our second dataset comes from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) initiative at Georgia Tech, which monitors global internet connectivity using three complementary technical signals to detect when networks go offline. IODA identifies outages at the country, regional, or network level and records their duration and severity. Importantly, unlike STOP, IODA detects outages but not their cause. An outage may reflect deliberate government action or infrastructure failure.

Panel (a) of Figure 3 compares the IODA measure of outages with the STOP measure of internet shutdowns for Russia. The IODA measure (right axis) is roughly 100 times as high as the STOP measure in any given period, as IODA records all detected disruptions regardless of intentionality. That said, the IODA data corroborate the finding that internet disruptions have become ever more frequent in Russia, with significant increases in 2024 and 2025.

Our third dataset comes from the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), which focuses on censorship rather than outages. OONI relies on volunteers running tests through an open-source app, generating measurements of whether specific websites, messaging platforms, and circumvention tools are accessible or blocked.

Figure 3. Trend in internet disruption and online censorship in Russia (2022-2025)

a. Count of internet disruptions

b. Rate of websites and apps censorship

Source: Access Now KeepItOn STOP (KIO), Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA), Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), and authors’ calculations.
Note: Panel (a) shows STOP internet shutdown events in the blue line, which records intentional disruptions of internet or electronic communication (KIO, see Figure 1), and IODA internet outages in the orange line, which are abnormal simultaneous drops in 2 or more signals measuring internet connectivity, intentional or accidental. IODA outages are filtered to only include events lasting more than 2 hours to match the KIO restriction. The red line shows a twelve-month moving average of IODA outages. Panel (b) shows online censorship rates for websites and messaging apps, measured by the monthly rate of anomalies recorded by OONI. An anomaly is detected when a measurement presents signs of potential network interference (such as the blocking of a website or app). Messaging apps data derive from OONI messaging platform availability tests (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messenger), and website data from OONI Web Connectivity tests on individual websites’ availability. Days and platforms or websites with fewer than 5 measurements are excluded for reliability.

It does so by comparing results over the user’s network against a control server, with divergences flagged as potential interference. The main limitation is uneven coverage over time, a consequence of the volunteer-based approach, though the total number of daily measurements is always known.

Panel (b) of Figure 3 plots anomaly rates for websites and messaging apps as experienced by Russian users since the start of 2022. Both lines show a clear upward trend, indicating that Russian users are increasingly encountering websites and apps that are blocked in Russia but available elsewhere.

The Centralisation of Russian Internet Control

While Russia has always exerted some degree of control over the internet, it has historically relied on what Ramesh et al. (2020) call a decentralised model. Since 2012, Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has maintained a national blocklist of websites and required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to restrict their users’ access to these websites. As ISPs were granted full discretion over how to comply, the blocking mechanisms and their effectiveness reportedly varied significantly across websites and providers.  The attempted blocking of Telegram in 2018 exposed the limitations of Russia’s decentralized approach to internet censorship. To enforce the ban, Roskomnadzor blocked millions of IP addresses associated with Amazon and Google cloud services, leading to widespread disruption of unrelated online services, while failing to prevent Russian users from accessing Telegram.

Since then, Russia has moved towards a more centralised model of internet governance, aimed at increasing state control over its domestic internet and reducing dependence on the global network. In 2019, the “Sovereign Internet Law” (or  “Law on Sustainable Runet”) came into force, which provided the Russian state the legal and technical tools to centrally monitor, filter and reroute internet traffic. The law requires ISPs to install TSPU (Tekhnicheskie Sredstva Protivodeystviya Ugrozam, or “technical means of countering threats”) devices on their networks, or face fines. These devices allow the government to track and manage internet traffic across private networks in a centralised manner (Human Rights Watch 2025).

TSPUs first attracted attention in 2021 when access to Twitter was throttled, but their impact has since become more widespread (Xue et al., 2021). In February 2023, OONI and the Russian digital rights organisation Roskomsvoboda reported that numerous media outlets and websites with critical coverage of the Russian war in Ukraine had been blocked in 2022. In a striking contrast to previous decentralised censorship practices, these restrictions were implemented simultaneously across internet providers. Figure 4, originally published by OONI, illustrates the simultaneous blocking of the Human Rights Watch website after it was added to Roskomnadzor’s blocklist on April 17, 2022. The figure shows that users across multiple networks lost access at the same time. The OONI report also highlights that providers are now using the same technical methods to enforce central directives, illustrating the widespread effective use of TSPUs.

Figure 4: Network interference in Russia

Source: Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), Roskomsvoboda, How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine.
Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) which presented the largest volume of anomalies (more than 1,200 anomalies) in the testing of www.hrw.org in Russia between 1st January 2022 to 20th February 2023. An anomaly is detected when a measurement presents signs of potential network interference (such as the blocking of a website or app).

Recent restrictions on Telegram provide further evidence of their efficacy. In contrast to the failed block in 2018, most Russian users are now unable to access the app without VPNs or other workarounds.

The capabilities of TSPUs extend far beyond individual website blocking. Recent reports suggest that instead of just targeting specific parts of the internet, they are now used to impose temporary, near-total internet blackouts. These cut users off from much of the global internet, while preserving access to a whitelist of Russian government websites and fully cooperative platforms (Human Rights Watch, 2026). In doing so, TSPU moves Russia closer to the Chinese model of internet control, increasing the state’s ability to manage internet traffic centrally.

Conclusion

In recent years, Russia’s strategy towards internet censorship has changed profoundly. The decentralised, relatively light-touch approach, with unrestricted access to many Western platforms, has been abandoned. The government has acquired the legal and technical capability to exert tight, centralised control over service providers, and every indicator we have analysed in this brief makes clear that it is using these powers ever more aggressively.

The incremental nature of these changes and their technical sophistication mean that Russia’s internet control cannot be equated with the blunt tool of country- or region-wide shutdowns as used by authoritarian governments in other parts of the world. These types of internet shutdowns are highly visible to domestic and international users and spark outrage. Russia’s strategy is more insidious. Its citizens’ access to the global internet has been shutting down, year by year and month by month. Individual users’ experience of these changes is fragmented, making a collective response difficult.  Russia is on its way to creating and controlling its very own version of the internet.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Mobile Learning and Indigenous Knowledge for Climate Resilience

Posted on June 8, 2026 | Policy Brief

Climate resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa depends on more than technological innovation. It also requires the preservation and transmission of locally embedded agricultural knowledge. Drawing on evidence from the ICRAFS project in Northern Ghana, this brief examines the conditions under which voice-based mobile learning can support climate adaptation among smallholder farmers. The audio modules were delivered through Farmerline’s Mergdata platform and reached more than 50,000 farmers in six local languages. They combined mobile learning with indigenous farming knowledge and Latvian seed-saving experience. Survey and fieldwork evidence show that digital extension is most effective when it is trusted, timely, intelligible across local languages and dialects, attentive to household decision-making, and linked to farmers’ economic realities. The brief argues that climate-resilient food systems require hybrid knowledge systems: scalable digital tools combined with community-based knowledge, locally adapted farming practices, and institutional support. It also shows how comparative lessons, such as Latvia’s seed-saving experience, can inform policy without being replicated directly.

Digital Extension and Climate Resilience

Climate change is increasing production risks for smallholder farmers, particularly in regions where food systems are highly vulnerable to environmental and economic shocks. In this brief, climate resilience refers to the ability of smallholder farmers and the wider food systems they depend on to adapt to climate-related shocks while sustaining production and livelihoods. In Sub-Saharan Africa, rising temperatures, irregular rainfall, soil degradation, and growing pest outbreaks are placing increasing pressure on agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods.

At the same time, access to mobile technologies has expanded rapidly. Even in remote and hard-to-reach rural areas, mobile phones have become a central infrastructure for communication and information exchange, alongside local radio stations and community hubs. However, many smallholder farmers continue to rely on basic feature phones rather than smartphones, making voice-based communication systems especially important for agricultural extension services.

International organisations and development agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have increasingly supported digital agricultural extension and mobile-based advisory systems as part of broader efforts to strengthen climate resilience and food security. Throughout this brief, digital agricultural extension refers to the use of mobile and digital tools to deliver farming advice and information. These systems create new opportunities for delivering agricultural knowledge at scale.

However, digital access alone does not automatically improve climate resilience. Extension systems that focus mainly on technological delivery risk overlooking social realities such as literacy barriers, local ecological knowledge, gendered patterns of information-sharing and decision-making, and trust in advisory systems. The key policy question is therefore not whether digital tools can reach farmers, but whether they can reach them in ways that are trusted, understandable, timely, and useful for real-time farming decisions.

Evidence from Northern Ghana suggests that digital agricultural extension is most effective when technology functions as a mediator that strengthens and amplifies existing community knowledge systems.

The ICRAFS Project: Evidence from Northern Ghana

The “Building Digital Education of Indigenous/Heritage Crops for the Resilience of African Food Systems in the Climate Crisis” (ICRAFS) project brought together Latvian and Ghanaian partners, including BICEPS, Farmerline, CSIR-Savanna Agricultural Research Institute, and the Latvian Permaculture Association, a leading organization behind Latvia’s seed savers movement. By combining development policy expertise, digital extension infrastructure, and local agricultural research capacity, the project explored how indigenous knowledge and digital learning can support climate adaptation among smallholder farmers. As part of the project, two educational modules were developed, each consisting of ten short audio lectures. The lectures covered regenerative agriculture, indigenous crops, seed-saving practices, soil management, pesticide reduction, and climate adaptation strategies. To ensure accessibility, the content was delivered in six local languages (Dagbani, Konkomba, Buli, Sissale, Chokosi, and English) through voice-based systems compatible with basic feature phones.

The audio content reached more than 50,000 farmers through Farmerline’s Mergdata platform, a Ghanaian digital agricultural extension system that combines mobile-based advisory services with AI-enabled tools designed for low-connectivity and low-literacy rural contexts. The educational content and broader community-based approach were developed in cooperation with the Latvian seed savers movement, whose experience in preserving heirloom crops and decentralised seed-sharing networks informed both the training materials and the wider vision for strengthening local resilience systems in Ghana.

The analysis draws on a baseline survey of 367 farmers and mixed-methods fieldwork with 60 farmers in Northern Ghana. Together, these data provide insight into the conditions under which mobile-based agricultural learning can support climate adaptation, highlighting the importance of design choices around language, trust, timing, and local knowledge.

Lessons From the Latvian Seed Savers Movement

The Latvian seed savers movement provided an important practical and conceptual reference point for the ICRAFS project.

The Latvian case shows that food-system resilience also depends on cultural memory, social networks, and ecological diversity. Community-based seed-saving systems contribute to ecological resilience by preserving genetic diversity, locally adapted crop varieties, and cultivation practices developed through long-term interaction with specific environmental conditions. Heirloom crops function not only as biological resources but also as carriers of local memory, identity, and intergenerational knowledge. In Latvia, seed-saving also helps preserve agricultural knowledge, rural identity, and community ties in the context of demographic decline and countryside depopulation.

For digital agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Latvian case offers a useful policy lesson. It should not be treated as a model for direct replication, but as evidence that resilient food systems depend on institutions and networks that protect local varieties, preserve practical knowledge, and maintain trust between farmers, communities, and knowledge holders. Educational initiatives are more effective when they connect climate adaptation and agricultural advice to local cultural experience and community-based knowledge systems.

Main Findings

Digital Access and Adoption

Research findings suggest that mobile phone ownership was nearly universal among surveyed farmers (98%), despite the majority of respondents relying on basic feature phones rather than smartphones. Approximately 72% reported receiving educational agricultural messages via mobile phones, while around 70% stated that they actively applied the information received to production and input-purchasing decisions.

Trust in digital advisory systems was also relatively high: among farmers who had received educational messages, approximately 78% reported trusting the source. Engagement data showed particularly high interest in traditional agricultural knowledge, regenerative farming methods, and seed-saving practices, with listening rates exceeding 70%.

These findings suggest that reach matters, but it is not sufficient. Digital extension becomes meaningful when farmers trust the source, understand the content, and can apply the information in farming and input decisions.

The strongest initial interest was recorded for content on diversification into indigenous crops. However, completion and listening rates suggest that initial curiosity is not enough to sustain engagement. For digital learning to remain useful, content on crop diversification needs to be closely connected to farmers’ immediate production choices, input constraints, market opportunities, and expected livelihood benefits.

In this context, digital agricultural extension services are most useful when they improve accessibility and personalisation, for example through voice-based interaction, local-language delivery, farmer profiling, and more targeted advisory content.

Indigenous Knowledge and Hybrid Resilience Systems

Evidence from Northern Ghana demonstrates that climate resilience is deeply rooted in locally embedded knowledge systems developed across generations. Farmers rely on sophisticated ecological knowledge to manage agricultural risks under uncertain climatic conditions.

Field observations identified a range of indigenous adaptation practices, including traditional composting systems, organic soil-fertility management, smoke-based seed preservation methods, and the use of ash to protect stored crops from pests. Farmers also rely on ecological indicators to interpret environmental change. For example, the presence of the weed Striga (“bochaa”) is widely understood as a sign of declining soil fertility or soil acidity.

High engagement with content on indigenous crops further suggests strong farmer interest in locally adapted crop systems as part of climate adaptation strategies.

Importantly, farmers do not perceive digital information as a replacement for indigenous knowledge. Instead, mobile-based advisory systems are integrated into existing local decision-making processes. This creates a hybrid resilience model in which indigenous knowledge provides contextual interpretation, while digital systems support broader dissemination, coordination, and real-time information sharing. However, the effectiveness of these hybrid resilience systems remains constrained by broader structural inequalities.

Structural Barriers to Effective Digital Extension

Despite the potential of mobile-based agricultural learning, several structural barriers continue to limit effectiveness.

Gender, language, and accessibility

Digital extension is not equally accessible to all farmers. Mixed-methods evidence from Northern Ghana shows that gender roles shape both access to technology and agricultural decision-making. Although women represented the majority of respondents, men often remained household gatekeepers, controlling mobile-device ownership and broader agricultural resource allocation. This creates asymmetries between formal access to information and effective control over decisions. It also means that digital extension must consider how agricultural information is shared within households, not only whether a message reaches a phone.

Low literacy levels further reinforce the importance of voice-based communication. Approximately 62% of respondents reported having no formal education, and farmers consistently found voice-based messages in local languages easier to understand than text-based formats. However, linguistic accessibility goes beyond translation: dialects, locally used farming vocabulary, and informal agricultural expressions strongly shape whether advice is understood, trusted, and acted upon.

Timing and economic incentives

Agricultural information is highly time-sensitive. Farmers reported that advice loses value if delivered outside key planting, harvesting, pest-management, input-purchasing, or output-selling windows. This means that digital extension depends not only on content quality, but also on synchronisation with local agricultural and market calendars.

Farmers also evaluate new practices through immediate economic outcomes. Long-term climate adaptation goals alone are often insufficient under conditions of economic vulnerability. Qualitative interviews suggest that farmers are more likely to adopt new practices when they are connected to visible benefits such as improved yields, lower input costs, reduced risk, or stronger market opportunities.

Overall, the main policy challenge is not simply expanding digital access, but designing extension systems that are trusted, locally intelligible, timely, and economically relevant. Voice-based delivery can help overcome literacy and smartphone barriers, but it is most effective when integrated with local radio, farmer groups, community leaders, and extension agents.

Policy Recommendations

The following recommendations are particularly relevant for rural agricultural regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and other low-income contexts where smallholder farming, limited digital infrastructure, low literacy rates, and dependence on feature phones continue to shape access to agricultural information and climate adaptation resources. They are addressed to agricultural ministries, extension agencies, donors, digital service providers, development partners, and farmer organisations working in rural, low-connectivity contexts.

  1. Shift voice-based systems from providing information to making information usable.

Voice-based advisory systems should be accessible through basic feature phones and combined with local radio, TV, farmer groups, and community-based extension channels. Their success should be assessed not only by reach, but also by whether farmers understand, trust, and use the information in agricultural decisions.

  1. Integrate indigenous knowledge into digital extension design.

Digital agricultural content should be co-designed with farmers, local extension agents, and community knowledge holders. Indigenous knowledge, local dialects, and farmer-used agricultural vocabulary should be integrated into digital platforms to improve trust, cultural relevance, and adoption.

  1. Account for gendered decision-making in digital extension.

Digital extension should account for the fact that receiving agricultural information does not always mean having the authority, resources, or training needed to act on it. Household decision-making over land, inputs, sales, technology use, and production priorities may still be shaped by gender roles. Advisory services should therefore support direct communication with women farmers, while also encouraging household-level information-sharing so that relevant advice reaches those involved in production and household food security.

  1. Align advisory services with agricultural and market calendars.

Advisory messages should be timed around key planting, harvesting, pest-management, input-purchasing, and output-selling periods, reaching farmers before decisions are made.

  1. Link climate adaptation to immediate economic benefits.

Climate adaptation should be communicated through immediate livelihood gains, linking regenerative agriculture, indigenous crops, seed-saving, and soil-management practices to improved productivity, lower input costs, reduced risk, and stronger market opportunities.

  1. Support community seed-saving and knowledge networks.

Community seed-saving initiatives, indigenous crop preservation, and farmer-to-farmer knowledge networks should be supported. Latvian experience shows that such systems can strengthen agrobiodiversity, reduce dependency on external inputs, and preserve locally adapted knowledge. In African contexts, these models should be adapted through local farmer organisations, extension services, and community institutions rather than replicated directly.

Conclusions

The evidence from Northern Ghana shows that digital agricultural extension can support climate resilience when it is designed around the realities of smallholder farmers. Voice-based mobile learning can reach farmers with limited literacy, limited internet access, or only basic feature phones, but technology alone is insufficient to change agricultural practices. Digital extension is most effective when it is trusted, accessible in local languages and dialects, responsive to how farming decisions are made within households, delivered at the right moment in the agricultural or market cycle, and linked to visible economic benefits.

Indigenous knowledge should not be treated as a barrier to innovation. Rather, it provides the local interpretation, ecological memory, and practical experience that make digital advisory systems more relevant and credible. The Latvian seed savers movement offers a useful comparative lesson: community-based knowledge systems can preserve biodiversity, strengthen rural identity, and maintain trust across generations.

The main policy implication is to treat digital extension as part of a broader rural resilience strategy. Investments in digital advisory systems and voice-based communication should be accompanied by support for local-language content, community institutions, farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange, and locally adapted seed-saving and farming practices.

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted within the project “Building Digital Education of Indigenous/Heritage Crops for the Resilience of African Food Systems in the Climate Crisis” (ICRAFS), supported by the Development Cooperation Programme (LATDEV) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia for 2024–2025. Grant agreement No. LV-72.

The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

“Extraordinary” Ordinary Elections in Armenia

Posted on June 1, 2026 | Policy Brief

On June 7, Armenia holds parliamentary elections following a competitive and aggressive campaign. The central battleground is twofold: the fragile peace deal with Azerbaijan, and Armenia’s geopolitical dilemma — alignment with Russia or movement towards Europe. Parties have raised the stakes to an existential level, warning that voting for the wrong side risks the country’s very survival — leaving little room for more conventional policy debates. While polls are favorable for the incumbent, nearly a third of voters remain undecided or silent, and their choice will determine everything.

Electoral Scene

On June 7, 2026, Armenia will elect its 9th parliament. Voters will be choosing from a list of 19 parties or alliances (blocks), among which the incumbent party and a fragmented opposition represented by a few relatively large players.

Elections are primarily dominated by issues related to national security, the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the country’s geopolitical orientation between Europe and Russia (Broers, 2026).

Observers and experts report a high degree of polarization and aggressive rhetoric used during the campaign (Hovhannisyan & Meister, 2026).

If one would like to characterize the elections with one word, that would be “Threat”. The main message the parties are trying to convey to voters is that the cost of making the wrong choice (essentially, not choosing them) is catastrophic, bordering on the country’s existence. As a consequence, there is very little discussion on policy platforms.

The main intrigue of the elections is a relatively high share of undecided voters and those who do not reveal their preferences during the polls. Will they participate and who would they vote for – this is the main question of these elections.

Electoral System

Armenia is a parliamentary democracy in which the National Assembly is elected by proportional representation, with seats allocated among parties and alliances that pass the legal threshold (4% for parties and 8% for blocks/alliances of parties). Since the constitutional changes of 2015 shifted executive power toward the Parliament, the prime minister is elected by the National Assembly, while the President is chosen indirectly and has a largely ceremonial role. Seats allocated to a party are distributed by calculating the proportion of the votes given to that party with respect to all votes of the parties that overcome the threshold.  If no party reaches 50+ percent of the seats, coalition talks are opened. First, the party with the relative majority of votes gets the opportunity to form a coalition that would ensure 50+ votes, and in case this does not work out, other parties above the threshold are allowed to form a coalition. If this fails, the second round of elections will be held.

The electoral law requires each third position in the electoral list of the party to be allocated to a woman. According to the analysis of party lists, 38 percent of all candidates across 19 parties are women, and the average age of candidates is 46. Overall, the lists include more than 2,100 candidates, and reserved seats for ethnic minorities are allocated through a separate list of 22 candidates. Specifically, four seats in the Parliament are reserved for ethnic minorities – Russians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Kurds.

Figure 1. Age and gender in the forthcoming 2026 Parliamentary elections’ candidate lists

Source: Central Electoral Commission, authors calculations. Note: CC – Civil Contract (ruling party), Hayastan – Hayastan Alliance, SA – Strong Armenia, PA- Prosperous Armenia, WU – Wings of Unity. See Section Main Players for details.

Main Players

While 19 parties are registered for the elections, the real competition, as one would expect, takes place among only a few of them.

Civil Contract, in power since 2018 under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, is the favorite of the race. The party positions itself as reformist, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy. Its main propositions are continuing institutional reforms, pursuing peace negotiations with Azerbaijan, and gradually deepening cooperation with the EU and Western partners.

Strong Armenia is a newly established opposition force led by major entrepreneur and investor Samvel Karapetyan. The party prioritizes business-oriented governance, national security, and closer strategic ties with Russia. It emphasizes traditional national institutions, such as the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Hayastan Alliance is led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Its core proposition is that Armenia requires more experienced and security-focused leadership, closer strategic coordination with Russia, and a tougher negotiating posture in regional affairs.

Prosperous Armenia is a business-oriented political party that emphasizes economic growth, social support programs, and improvements in living standards. Its main propositions include job creation, infrastructure development, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and maintaining a pragmatic and balanced foreign policy approach.

Wings of Unity, led by former Ombudsman Armen Tatoyan, positions itself around national security, rule of law, protection of national interests, and institutional resilience. The movement emphasizes strengthening Armenia’s security architecture, defending human rights and state sovereignty, and restoring public trust in governance and national institutions.

While not among the main players, there is an interesting “experiment” embedded in these elections. Among the parties competing, there is a party called “Against all”. A ballot option that existed years ago is now featured as a party with essentially only one program point: change the electoral law, unwind the Parliament, and call for new elections.

Core Issues

It is difficult to judge who sets the main agenda, but the central debated issues are quite clear.

One of the central topics of the elections is “peace building” with Azerbaijan. In its program, Prime Minister Pashinyan states: ” On June 7, go vote and stand for peace by supporting the Civil Contract party”. While the incumbent views its actions as protecting a fragile peace through international legitimacy, the contestants view the same actions as eroding national sovereignty and traditional foundations.

A consequential discussion is what the role of external actors is and the extent to which they influence the country’s policy agenda. The closer the election date, the harsher the rhetoric. “Electing Tsarukyan (the leader of Prosperous Armenia party) is equivalent to electing Aleksandr Lukashenko (the President of Belarus),” announced Prime Minister Pashinyan during the meeting with his supporters (May 13, 2026). “Electing Pashinyan is the same as electing Aliyev (the President of Azerbaijan),” announced the former President and one of the opposition leaders, Robert Kocharyan, during a similar event (May 19, 2026).

During his visit to Armenia within the framework of the 8th Summit of the European Political Community (EPC) on May 4th, French President Macron said: “Armenia has indeed made the choice… to break free from this constraint and turn towards Europe” (Brezar, 2026). On May 9th, after the traditional parade in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, during a press conference, highlighted that Armenia needs to make up its mind about European Integration as soon as possible to avoid consequences observed in Ukraine (Civilnet, May 11, 2026).

And this leads to the second core issue: Armenia’s alignment in the confrontation between Russia and Europe. Essentially, both the EU and Russia implicitly or explicitly push Armenia to make a choice, and irrespective of their intentions, this becomes one of the central issues around which the electoral competition is constructed.

For the first time, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is not among the important ones in Armenia. As an important background, these are the first elections since the exodus of Armenians from the region in September of 2023. Roughly 35 thousand out of a total of more than 100 thousand refugees will be eligible to vote as a consequence of applying and getting Armenian citizenship (News.am, March 20, 2026 ). With 2.5 million eligible voters, the refugees will hardly have any effect on these elections.

What Do Programs Contain?

Heated mutual allegations and strong language regarding the core issues make the headlines of these elections. But the parties also compete on more specific promises. The cornerstone of the opposition party Strong Armenia’s program is the creation of 300 thousand jobs within 6 years from now (Party programs are available at https://www.elections.am/Elections/Parliamentary). The incumbent party’s promise is somewhat less ambitious – 25 thousand jobs annually. These elections are not lacking in creative ideas either. To mention a few: Wings of Unity proposes abandoning VAT and moving to sales tax, Prosperous Armenia promises to double the minimum wage and triple GDP in five years. In different framings, free education, free housing for families with more than 3 children, subsidized agriculture, and lower taxes for small businesses are included in the programs of various parties.

Interestingly, none of the major parties (maybe with the exception of Hayastan Alliance) advocates for a certain choice between deeper integration with the West (be that the EU or the  US) or Russia. At least on paper, the parties find it possible to continue maintaining balance and developing relations with all stakeholders in the region.

The External Squeeze

Major regional and international commitments of the Republic provide a rich playfield for both the current government and the opposition. On August 8, 2025, Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev joined the US President Donald Trump in Washington to pre-sign the peace treaty. A major element of the summit was the announcement of a proposed regional transit and infrastructure initiative called the TRIPP project (“Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”). On the margins of the same meeting in Washington, Armenia and the US also agreed to cooperate on nuclear energy production in Armenia. All these steps, coupled with an ongoing visa liberalization process and deeper engagement with EU partners, resulted in voiced concerns by Russia. In fact, Russia went beyond voicing concerns. On May 22nd, Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for consumer protection and enforcement of food and product safety regulations) temporarily suspended the import and turnover of all batches of Jermuk mineral water in Russia (ARKA (a), May 22, 2026). Two days earlier, Rosselkhoznadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for phytosanitary control and oversight of animal and plant imports) announced that starting from May 22, the import of Armenian flowers to Russia will be temporarily restricted. Both are important export items for Armenia (ARKA (b), May 22, 2026).

The Kremlin’s approach is rational – make sure that in the process of possible future EU integration, the costs of leaving the Eurasian Economic Union kick in much earlier than the benefits from deeper cooperation with the EU. Whether this is a signal to any winner of the elections or an indirect way to influence outcomes is an open question.

The fact that the leader of the new opposition party, Samvel Karapetyan, has made his fortune in Russia complicates the landscape even more.

What Do Polls Say?

The results of the most recent polls at the time of this brief’s writing are summarized in Figure 2.

Figure 2. April-May poll results of the main competing parties

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup).

While all these polls claim to be nationally representative and to provide results within conventional error margins, the differences among them are significant. Also, in the 2021 elections, the winning party received more than 50% of the total votes, while pre-election polls had put it at roughly half that share (IRI, May 2021). One likely source contributing to this difference was the involvement of originally undecided voters. In 2021, according to the same source, 17% of poll respondents planned to abstain with certainty or with a high likelihood. If many of them eventually decided to come and vote for the incumbent, that could have tilted the scales.

In the current elections, the situation repeats. The share of undecided voters according to various polls is quite large as well (Figure 3). What if the undecided voters make up their minds and participate?

Figure 3. Undecided voters and possible abstainers

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup). “Will not vote” refers to those who are certain about that choice.

We have implemented a simple simulation to understand the role undecided voters can play. To do that, we have assumed a scenario in which the incumbent’s support is taken from the least optimistic poll, and the opposition’s support is slightly boosted (see note below Figure 4).

Figure 4. Simulation of the effect of undecided votes on outcomes, assuming they vote.

Source: Author’s calculations. Scenario assumptions: Share of undecided votes – 20%. Support in population assumption: Civil Contract (CC – incumbent) – 25%, Strong Armenia (SA) – 15%, Hayastan Block – 8%, Prosperous Armenia – slightly less than 4%. Shares going to the opposition are split between the two parties in respective proportions. The votes of respondents refusing to answer (around 20%) were split among all parties in proportion to their existing (stated) support. It is assumed that no other parties pass the threshold.

Essentially, the results indicate that even if all undecided votes are mobilized, the opposition must capture more than half of them to bring the elections to the 2nd round.

Conclusion

An objective that the parties seem to have accomplished quite well was to convince the devoted voters that their defeat would result in an apocalyptic outcome. As a result, we witness aggressive campaigns, high polarization, and a lack of policy discussion. Whether this will encourage or discourage voters to participate, we will learn on June 7th.

At the moment, neither the EU nor Armenia has expressed readiness to consider granting Armenia candidate-country status, nor has Armenia announced the intention to exit the Eurasian Economic Union. Past experience suggests that these are long processes, taking years if not decades to unravel, and multiple pivots can occur in these directions over the coming years, irrespective of the election outcome.

Yet even if the vote does not ultimately determine where the country is heading, it remains decisive for who will steer it — and that hinges on a single unknown: a bloc of voters who refuse to be counted. The ruling party leads in the polls, but its margin may depend on them. For the opposition merely to reach a second round, it would need not just to mobilize undecided voters but to win more than half of them – yet, the evidence points to most of them not voting at all, as in 2021. Armenia has never gone to a second round, and the numbers make a first-round result the most probable outcome. What June 7th will really reveal, then, is whether a campaign fought almost entirely on fear pulled anyone off the sidelines, or pushed them further away.

References

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this brief are the author’s personal views and in no way reflect the views of the American University of Armenia, or those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Combating Tolerance for Sexual Harassment With Information: Evidence From a Field Experiment

Posted on May 25, 2026 | Policy Brief

Sexual harassment remains widespread, and women face higher exposure from colleagues and managers in male-dominated work environments. Can simple information change workplace culture and reduce harassment? This column presents evidence from a randomized field experiment in the Norwegian military. The results show that information that corrects misperceptions can substantially reduce tolerance for sexual harassment. The results also offer guidance for future experiments by identifying an important measurement challenge for detecting behavioral change.

Sexual harassment carries significant costs for individuals and organizations, including poorer health, higher turnover, and higher levels of economic gender inequality (e.g., Folke and Rickne 2022). While prevention is urgent, the most common prevention methods face substantial critique. Employee training can lead to resistance or backlash from potential harassers, and reporting systems fail when fear of retaliation holds victims and witnesses back from making reports. These problems have led experts to call for research on organization-level solutions that prevent sexual harassment by reshaping workplace contexts and cultures (Cortina and Areguin 2021).

Targeting Misperceptions

A growing literature shows that misperceptions of others’ attitudes can sustain gender inequality (Bursztyn et al. 2020). In the context of sexual harassment, individuals may underestimate how negatively others view these behaviors or hold inaccurate beliefs about women’s competence. These misperceptions can contribute to environments in which harassment persists. Our newly published research article (Folke et al. 2026) designs an information intervention to correct misperceptions related to common sexual harassment behaviors and, in turn, reduce their prevalence.

A Field Experiment in the Norwegian Military

We implemented a randomized field experiment among recruits in the Norwegian military during an eight-week boot camp. The intervention was embedded in a standard enrolment survey and delivered in a low-salience way to minimize backlash. It was randomized across rooms in which recruits live and collaborate for the duration of the boot camp.

The treatment provided two pieces of information based on survey data from previous cohorts. This prior survey data identified the two most common forms of harassment in our setting, crude sexual jokes and negative comments about women’s competence. We designed the information intervention to directly target misperceptions related to these behaviors. Treated work groups were informed that a majority of their peers consider sexualized jokes to constitute harassment, and that women perform equally well as men on military performance tests. Both pieces of information were based on actual data.

The randomization at the group level allowed us to compare treated and control groups immediately after the randomized treatment, but before they met for the first time (baseline), as well as at the end of the eight-week boot camp (endline). We measure both attitudes towards harassment and self-reported experiences during the training period.

Large and Persistent Effects on Attitudes

The intervention produced substantial changes in attitudes. Treated recruits became significantly less tolerant of sexual harassment immediately after receiving the information, and about half of this effect remained eight weeks later.

Figure 1 shows the impact on an index of tolerant attitudes. The immediate effect at baseline is large, and while it declines over time, it remains statistically and economically meaningful. These effects are sizeable relative to existing evidence on workplace training programmes, which often show limited or short-lived impacts (Roehling et al. 2022). We find no evidence of backlash among individuals with initially high tolerance levels.

Figure 1. Effects of the information intervention on tolerance of sexual harassment (baseline and endline)

Source: Figure 1 from  Folke et al. 2026

Behavioral Effects and a Measurement Challenge

Turning to behavior, the results are less conclusive. The intervention’s impact on sexual harassment prevalence is directionally negative but statistically insignificant (see Figure 2).

The results reveal an important challenge for field experiments seeking to evaluate prevention methods. Any intervention that increases awareness of sexual harassment may struggle to detect a reduction in exposure. Increased awareness makes people more likely to notice and report borderline behaviors in the endline survey, which raises self-reported harassment in the treatment group and offsets a potential negative treatment effect on exposure. In our case, results from participants’ evaluations of a vignette about sexual harassment show clear shifts in their interpretations and evaluations of the same situation. Our intervention increased the likelihood of recognizing problematic behaviors and assigning responsibility to the perpetrator. A likely implication is that this increased awareness also led participants to recall and report more incidents in the endline survey, masking real reductions in harassment.

Figure 2. Effects of the information intervention on self-reported harassment prevalence.

Source: Figure 2 from  Folke et al. 2026

Implications for Policy and Research

The paper suggests that simple, low-cost interventions can shift workplace norms in meaningful ways. Policies that correct misperceptions about peer attitudes and competence may complement or outperform traditional training programs.

At the same time, the paper provides important takeaways for future evaluation research. Randomized controlled trials that evaluate prevention interventions for sexual harassment are extremely rare (see Sharma 2024 for an exception). Future evaluations should design the experiments to account for the fact that the intervention may affect awareness and, in turn, bias the treatment effect on prevalence downward. Power calculations in pre-analysis plans may account for this downward bias. To correctly capture behavioral changes, designs should ideally supplement data on self-reports of sexual harassment with objective measurements from other sources. Modern methods for analyzing data from text or video may offer new metrics and more reliable results.

Our research shows that changing what people believe others think may be a powerful lever for changing behavior. In settings where misperceptions sustain harmful practices, information can be an effective policy tool to reduce the tolerance of sexual harassment in work groups. Future field experiments should test more interventions while being mindful of the important empirical hurdle revealed by the present research.

References

  • Bursztyn, L., González, A. L., & Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2020). Misperceived social norms: Women working outside the home in Saudi Arabia. American Economic Review, 110(10), 2997-3029.
  • Cortina, L. M., & Areguin, M. A. (2021). Putting people down and pushing them out: Sexual harassment in the workplace. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 8(1), 285-309.
  • Folke, O., & Rickne, J. (2022). Sexual harassment and gender inequality in the labor market. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(4), 2163-2212.
  • Folke, Olle, Hanson, Torbjørn, Johnsen, Åshild A., Kosadam, Andreas, and Johanna Rickne (2026). Targeting Attitudes to Combat Sexual Harassment: A Randomized Intervention in the Norwegian Military. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization,
  • Roehling, M. V., Wu, D., Dulebohn, J., & Choi, M. G. (2019, July). The Effect of Sexual Harassment Training on Knowledge, Skill, and Attitudes: A Meta-Analysis. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2019, No. 1, p. 19436). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
  • Sharma, K. (2024). Tackling Sexual Harassment: Short and Long-Run Experimental Evidence from India. Available at SSRN 6460764.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

How Polarised Is Support for Ukraine Across Europe?

Posted on May 18, 2026 | Policy Brief

20260518 How Polarised Is Support for Ukraine Image 01

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered broad public support across Western democracies. Since then, support in the United States has declined and become sharply partisan. In this policy brief, we use Eurobarometer data from 2022 to 2024 to show that while overall support for Ukraine remains high in the European Union, it has declined over time and become more politically polarised. We introduce a polarisation index to compare trends across countries and over time. There is substantial heterogeneity: while support remains close to universal in some countries, such as Sweden, others have seen marked increases in polarisation, with support weakening particularly on the far right. We find that higher inflation is associated with greater polarisation for costly policies, such as sanctions against Russia, but not for humanitarian aid. Finally, we present suggestive evidence that polarisation in support for sanctions may reflect domestic political debate.

From Consensus to Polarisation?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted widespread public support for Ukraine on both sides of the Atlantic. According to a PEW survey less than one month after the invasion, only 7% of Americans (9% of Republicans and 5% of Democrats) said the US is providing too much support to Ukraine (PEW, 2022). Two years later, overall support dropped significantly and support for Ukraine became politically polarised: with 47% of Republicans but only 13% of Democrats saying that the US is providing too much support (PEW, 2024).

In this brief, we use microdata from Eurobarometer covering over 185,000 respondents to evaluate whether the same trends are present in the EU. We show that support for Ukraine remained relatively high and stable across Europe from 2022 to 2024. This finding is consistent with other surveys that report resilient support among Europeans despite pessimism about the war’s likely outcome (Krastev and Leonard 2024) and personal costs in terms of inflation (Demertzis et al. 2023). Our brief focuses specifically on political cleavages within countries. We show that policies supporting Ukraine have become increasingly polarising in some countries and evaluate potential drivers of that polarisation.

Support for Ukraine Across the Political Spectrum

Figure 1 shows support for economic sanctions against Russia (Panel A) and humanitarian aid for Ukraine (Panel B) in the EU, by respondents’ self-reported left–right political placement in the Eurobarometer (for details on this measure, see also Lehne and Zhuang, 2023b). Support for Ukraine was high across the political spectrum in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, but declined in the latest Eurobarometer data from October 2024. The sharpest declines occur on the far right, especially for economic sanctions against Russia.

Figure 1A. Support for economic sanctions against Russia

Figure 1B. Support for humanitarian aid to Ukraine

Source: Eurobarometer and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows the mean support for each measure in April 2022 (in blue) and October 2024 (in red) in the EU. Based on binary transformations of Eurobarometer questions on support for each measure; dots show means and bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

A similar pattern holds for military aid to Ukraine, though the average level of support is lower (not shown). Support for humanitarian aid is uniformly higher and less politically polarising; even among respondents on the very far right, more than three-quarters are in favour.

This overall pattern masks large heterogeneity across countries. Figure 2 shows support for sanctions against Russia in four European countries: Sweden, Poland, Greece and France. In Sweden, support for sanctions is close to universal, broadly uniform across the political spectrum, and has changed little in the two years since the start of the war. Similarly, in Poland, support remains very high but declines in 2024 among respondents on the centre-right. Support varies more with political leaning in countries such as France and Greece. While support for sanctions was relatively high in France in 2022, especially in the centre, it has declined markedly on the right. This pattern is repeated across many other European countries, including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. By contrast, in Greece, support for sanctions was comparatively lower to begin with and declined further over time. In Greece, as in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovakia, support is particularly weak on the left.

Figure 2. Political Polarisation in Support for Sanctions across four European countries

2a. Sweden

2b. Poland

2c. France

2d. Greece

Source: Eurobarometer and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows mean support for sanctions against Russia in April 2022 (in blue) and October 2024 (in red) in (a) Sweden, (b) Poland, (c) France and (d) Greece. Based on binary transformations of Eurobarometer questions on support for each measure; dots show means and bars indicate standard deviations.

A Political Polarisation Index

In order to compare how politicised support for Ukraine is across countries and over time, we  develop a polarisation index (see technical note for details). This measures the extent to which each self-reported ideology group’s support for a policy differs from the country-wide average (in other words, how far the dots in Figure 1 lie from a horizontal line).  The index ranges from 0 (all groups share the same position on sanctions) to 1 (groups hold opposing positions that are perfectly predicted by political ideology). Comparing the same country over time, there are two factors that change the index: (i) within an ideology group, average support for a policy may change, and (ii) the size of ideology groups (and their weight in the index) may change as the distribution of political views in the country evolves.

Comparing across countries, the index does not depend on the left-right gradient of support. While France and Greece show opposite patterns in Figure 2, they score similarly on the sanctions polarisation index in October 2024 (0.16 and 0.15, respectively). For Sweden, Figure 2 shows much greater consensus across the political spectrum, which translates into a significantly lower polarisation score: 0.05.

We find that some policies are associated with greater polarisation than others. There is widespread support in the EU for providing humanitarian aid and welcoming refugees from Ukraine, and polarisation scores are lower for these measures than for financial aid, military aid, sanctions on Russia or Ukraine becoming an EU candidate country. At the same time, looking at the EU as a whole, there has been an upwards trend in polarisation across all measures (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Political Polarisation Indices for different policies supporting Ukraine

Source: Eurobarometer and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows the EU-average political polarisation index for six different policies supporting Ukraine. The EU average is constructed using population weights. Survey waves are unevenly spaced across time. Some policies are not asked about in some waves.

Figure 4 shows which countries are driving the increase in polarisation. It plots the polarisation score for sanctions in April 2022 (shortly after the full-scale invasion) against the corresponding score in October 2024 (the latest wave for which data are available). Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia show the greatest increase in polarisation over this period. Views on sanctions are also increasingly aligned with political cleavages in France, Germany, and Hungary. By contrast, Latvia shows a significant decline in polarisation while in Finland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden polarisation remained at very low levels more than two years into the war.

Figure 4. Political Polarisation Index for Sanctions against Russia 2022 vs 2024

Source: Eurobarometer and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows the political polarisation index for support for sanctions against Russia from the Eurobarometer data in October 2024 on the y-axis against the polarisation index in April 2022 on the x-axis. Includes all EU27 countries.

Drivers of Political Polarisation

In the next section, we show how political polarisation in support for Ukraine is related to the economy and domestic politics.

Polarisation and Price Increases

Figure 5 shows how political polarisation and inflation are related across countries in the EU. Political polarisation in support for sanctions against Russia at the end of 2024 tended to be higher in countries where prices increased faster between 2022 and 2024. As the cost of living increased, the issue of Russian sanctions became a point of contention between voters of different political leanings. Some political parties also started to capitalise on this issue to gain support. In contrast, there has been widespread agreement on the need for humanitarian aid to Ukraine and this was unaffected by the state of the economy.

Figure 5. Political Polarisation and Inflation

Source: Eurobarometer, Eurostat and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows the polarisation index for support for sanctions against Russia (in blue) and humanitarian aid for Ukraine (in red) from the Eurobarometer data in October 2024 against the average annual HICP inflation rate between 2022 and 2024 in percentage points. Includes all EU27 countries.

Polarisation and Elections

In Figure 6, we show how the polarisation index for support for sanctions against Russia (blue) and humanitarian aid for Ukraine (red) evolves around elections. Political polarisation for sanctions increases slightly around election periods, suggesting heightened debate on this issue. In contrast, polarisation in support for humanitarian aid shows little change over the election cycle.

Figure 6. Political Polarisation and Elections

Source: Eurobarometer, PPEG, Manifesto Project and authors’ calculations.
This chart shows the polarisation index for support for sanctions against Russia (blue) and humanitarian aid for Ukraine (red) in the two years before and after national parliamentary elections. Dots show means and bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. This is based on an unbalanced sample of EU countries with a lower house election between April 2022 and October 2024. For each country, only the closest election is used.

A Tale of Three Countries

Political parties play an important role in shaping the political discourse around Russia’s war on Ukraine. They are likely to both influence and be influenced by their voters’ attitudes towards supporting Ukraine.

In this section, we present a case study of three European countries that had elections between 2022 and 2024 and where parties have mentioned Russia in their manifestos according to data from the Manifesto project (see also Lehne and Zhuang, 2023a).

In Sweden, support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression has been consistently high along all dimensions and among voters across the political spectrum. In the Swedish elections in September 2022, six out of eight parties (including all three major parties) mentioned Russia in their party manifestos, and all supported sanctions against Russia.

Russia was also mentioned in the party manifestos of many of the parties contesting the French election in June 2022. But in France, the far-right Rassemblement Nationale broke with the other political parties and struck a more conciliatory tone towards Russia. For instance, they stated that they “… will be seeking an alliance with Russia on certain fundamental issues: European security, which cannot exist without Russia; the fight against terrorism, which Russia has fought more consistently than any other power; and convergence in the handling of major regional issues impacting France …” (Manifesto Project). This divergence is mirrored in voter attitudes. Support for sanctions against Russia has declined over time in France, especially amongst voters on the far right of the political spectrum.

In Greece, political support for sanctions against Russia is lower than in many other European countries has been declining over time. Political polarisation in support for Ukraine increased, especially around the elections in May and June 2023. Few of the political parties mentioned Russia directly in their manifestos, and then mostly in conjunction with rising prices and effects on the Greek economy.

Figure 7. Political Polarisation in Support for Ukraine

7a. Sanctions against Russia

7b. Humanitarian Aid for Ukraine

Source: Eurobarometer, Manifesto Project and authors’ calculations.
These charts show political polarisation in support for sanctions against Russia (Panel A) and humanitarian aid for Ukraine (Panel B) in France, Greece and Sweden. Vertical dashed lines show the timing of national parliamentary elections.

Conclusion

Public support for Ukraine remains high in the EU, but there are worrying signs of fragmentation. While some countries continue to exhibit broad consensus in supporting Ukraine across multiple policies, other countries have seen declining support as the debate has become aligned with domestic political cleavages. Sanctions against Russia and military aid to Ukraine have become increasingly contentious, while there is broader agreement on the need for humanitarian aid. In many countries, it is particularly voters on the far-right of the political spectrum who have become less supportive of policies supporting Ukraine.

Our analysis highlights two areas of fragility in the consensus around support for sanctions against Russia. We see some indication that the domestic political debate can drive polarisation in opinions on sanctions against Russia, with the salience of these issues increasing around elections, particularly when parties competing in the elections have different policy platforms.

Another source of fragility is the economic cost of sanctions. Countries that experienced larger increases in prices since 2022 exhibit greater political disagreement over sanctions, suggesting that economic costs can shape the political sustainability of support for Ukraine. Recent increases in energy prices, linked to the war in Iran, may further amplify political polarisation around sanctions against Russia.

Despite these pressures, clear majorities across most EU countries continue to support Ukraine, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid and welcoming refugees. European solidarity has so far proven resilient in the face of growing external pressures.

Technical note:

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Retaining Third-country Graduates in Latvia

Posted on May 13, 2026 | Policy Brief

20260513 Retaining Third-country Graduates Image 01

This policy brief presents key findings from recent research on the integration and employment opportunities of third-country students and graduates in Latvia. Drawing on survey data as well as qualitative interviews and focus groups with students, graduates, employers, and policy stakeholders, it identifies major individual, organisational, and systemic barriers, including language requirements, administrative complexity, and limited access to professional networks, that hinder the transition from study to employment. Based on this evidence, the brief proposes strategic policy priorities to improve international student retention, strengthen labour market integration, and enhance the long-term economic contribution of international graduates.

Latvia is facing a long-term demographic decline and shrinking working-age population, with labour shortages already evident across multiple sectors. The population of Latvia (1.86 million in 2025) is projected to shrink by 15% over the next 15 years, reaching as low as 1.58 mln. The fall in the working-age population is likely to be more dramatic – the Eurostat baseline scenario foresees a decline of 19%, or 220,000 people, from the current 1.2 million, presenting substantial challenges to the economy and society. Migration may mitigate the impact on the labour market but is controversial. In this context, international, third-country students and graduates represent a strategically important and relatively low-risk talent pool: they are young, educated, familiar with Latvia’s institutional environment and society, and well positioned to contribute to economic growth if successfully integrated into the labour market.

Research by BICEPS, completed in 2026, has investigated labour market challenges faced by young third-country nationals in Latvia. The study focuses on full-time third-country students (non-EU/EEA/Swiss nationals) enrolled in Latvian higher education institutions, as well as recent graduates, including both those who remained in Latvia and those who left after completing their studies. The analysis is based on multiple data sources: a wide quantitative survey of students and graduates from third countries (363 current students and 102 graduates); in-depth interviews and focus groups with students and graduates, as well as semi-structured interviews with employers, recruitment specialists and key stakeholders – ministry representatives, university administrations, and NGOs among them. The analysis is further complemented by administrative data obtained upon special request from the Central Statistical Bureau (CSP), the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA), and the Ministry of Education and Science. The multi-level approach allows to identify factors hindering employment at the individual, organisational, and system levels, as well as to characterise third-country graduates’ perceptions of the Latvian labour market.

Who Comes to Latvia for Studies and Why

In the 2024/2025 academic year, Latvia hosted 7,439 third-country students, accounting for app. 10% of the total student population. This group is highly concentrated: 92% of all third-country students originate from just 10 countries; India, Uzbekistan, and Sri Lanka account for 64% of the total, with India remaining the largest and fastest-growing source country since 2017.

International students’ decision to study in Latvia is driven primarily by economic considerations and access to the European Union. For many students from third countries, Latvia represents an affordable entry point to European higher education. The most frequently cited motivations include affordable tuition fees (74.4%), low living costs (69.7%), and the perceived quality of education (61.4%). In addition, for 45.3% of respondents, the opportunity to study in an EU member state was the decisive factor in their choice.

Hence, Latvia’s competitive advantage in attracting international students lies primarily in cost-related factors and access to the EU. Recruitment is concentrated within a relatively narrow set of source countries, indicating weaknesses in the international competitiveness of Latvian higher education.

Attraction Without Retention

The number of third-country nationals studying in Latvian higher education institutions has increased threefold over the last decade. International student enrolment is highly concentrated in social sciences, business and law, healthcare-related fields, and selected STEM disciplines, particularly information technologies and engineering. Despite this growth, retention outcomes are weak.

29% of third-country graduates begin working in Latvia immediately after completing their studies, and additional 15% remain in the country to seek employment, OCMA/Graduate Monitoring data show. While the share appears strong, further in-depth analysis suggests that higher-motivated youngsters and graduates with higher academic achievements are more prone to leave, and third-country graduates are more commonly over-skilled for the position they are employed in, compared to local graduates. These facts point to barriers in the labour market specific to non-EU nationals.

Student Employment and Social Integration

Survey data highlight a clear hierarchy of obstacles faced by international students during their studies in Latvia, with labour market access, limited social interaction, and language barriers emerging as the most significant challenges (Figure 1). While some international students work during their studies to co-finance the living expenses, their employment is largely concentrated in low-skilled sectors unrelated to their fields of study. Such employment rarely contributes to professional integration or long-term career prospects in Latvia. Most working students are employed in hospitality (20.5%), retail (13.5%), or as couriers and delivery workers (11.7%). While such jobs provide short-term income, they offer limited opportunities to develop professional skills, build relevant networks, or transition into qualified employment after graduation.

Figure 1.  Main barriers faced by international students in Latvia (% of respondents).

Source: Authors’ survey of third-country students and graduates, 2025

The key factor driving this pattern is limited proficiency in Latvian. Approximately 96% of international students assess their Latvian language skills as insufficient for a professional environment. Although students express strong motivation to learn, mandatory language courses during their studies are often inadequate to achieve functional workplace proficiency. Limited availability of state-funded courses and the high cost of private language courses further constrain progress. Outside the IT sector and large, globally oriented companies where Latvian language proficiency is not required or is of secondary importance, most locally oriented and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) consider insufficient Latvian language skills a decisive obstacle to hiring international talent. Interviews further reveal a pronounced sense of social isolation among international students. Many describe a “parallel lives” experience within universities, where key student extracurricular activities are conducted exclusively in Latvian. As a result, international students feel excluded from meaningful participation in social life and alienated. This lack of interaction is reflected in survey results, with 52% of international students reporting that they rarely or never communicate with local Latvian students. These factors reinforce isolation rather than facilitate integration, failing to build students’ attachment to Latvia and reducing the likelihood of long-term retention.

Administrative Uncertainty and Career Mismatch

In-depth analysis highlights the significant psychological burden created by Latvia’s migration and residence permit framework. As graduation approaches, many international students describe the residence permit renewal process as a “sword hanging over their head.” Residence permits expire four months after completion of studies, leaving a narrow and unrealistic window to secure stable, qualified employment that will permit receiving an employment visa based on the employer’s request. Both graduates and employers consistently emphasised that this timeframe is incompatible with standard recruitment procedures for professional positions.

Beyond legal uncertainty, graduates report broader economic concerns. Many describe a gap between their expectations and the economic reality in Latvia, particularly regarding salary levels, career progression, and the availability of specialised professional pathways. Students in fields such as finance, advanced analytics, or other specialised fields frequently noted that Latvia lacks the industry depth and professional ecosystems found in larger global centres, leading them to view the country as a temporary stepping stone rather than a long-term destination.

Reflecting on perceptions, 43.3% of international students plan to start working immediately after graduation, 42.6% plan to leave Latvia for another country, indicating a lost opportunity to attract highly qualified human capital.

In addition, many students reported experiences of stigma and discrimination, including police document checks and micro-aggressions encountered in public spaces and, in some cases, within academic institutions. Such experiences further undermine graduates’ sense of security and belonging, reinforcing intentions to leave Latvia after completing their studies. These challenges are reflected in a systematic gap between international students’ expectations and their assessment of Latvia’s performance, as illustrated in Figure 2. The Importance–Performance Analysis highlights a structural weakness in Latvia’s international student retention strategy. International students rate employment opportunities, income levels, and economic growth prospects as the most important factors when deciding where to build their future, yet satisfaction with Latvia’s performance in these areas remains low. In contrast, safety and personal security are evaluated positively but do not compensate for weak labour-market outcomes. The results indicate that Latvia’s current approach prioritises student attraction through affordability and a safe living environment while insufficiently addressing post-graduation career pathways. To retain international talent, Latvia must improve labour-market access, wage competitiveness, and long-term career prospects.

Figure 2. Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) of Factors Influencing International Graduates’ Decision to Stay in Latvia

Source: Authors’ survey of third-country students and graduates, 2025.
Note: IPA compares how important specific attributes are to respondents with how well those same attributes are perceived to perform. By plotting the average importance and performance scores for each attribute in a four-quadrant figure, the tool helps identify strengths, gaps, and priorities for action.

The Employer Perspective

Employers generally display a neutral to cautiously positive attitude toward hiring international graduates. Their willingness to recruit and adapt, however, depends strongly on company-specific factors. Internationally oriented companies, most commonly IT and service centre companies, that operate primarily in English tend to recruit globally and view Latvian language skills as an advantage rather than a strict requirement. Startups are similarly open, focusing primarily on skills, adaptability, and speed; however, positions in startups are often perceived by graduates as less stable in the long term.

By contrast, locally oriented SMEs, which constitute the majority in the Latvian economy, and international but locally oriented companies are significantly more hesitant. Employers in this group frequently cite limited administrative capacity, unfamiliarity with migration and residence permit procedures, and concerns that employing non-Latvian speakers may disrupt everyday workplace communication. Employee roles in smaller companies are typically broader, and work tasks require local knowledge.  Employers’ attitude towards hiring third-country nationals can be characterised as passively open and is determined by a rational benefit-cost thinking. Inclusion most often occurs when the foreigner organically fits into the existing work environment model – language, communication rhythm, office routine. There is limited to no evidence of discriminatory attitude based on origin.

System-level Challenges

Beyond individual and employer-level barriers, there are systemic shortcomings that constrain international graduates’ successful integration into the Latvian labour market. These include fragmented governance, the absence of a coherent national strategy for retaining international talent, weak coordination among universities, employers, and public institutions, and limited availability of post-graduation language training and structured career support. In addition, public discourse around migration often frames international mobility in negative or security-oriented terms, failing to separate qualified professionals and university graduates from low-skilled or benefit-seeking migrants, undermining social inclusion and weakening international graduates’ sense of belonging. These factors reduce Latvia’s attractiveness as a long-term destination for international graduates, even when labour demand is high and economic opportunities exist.

Policy Recommendations

The barriers to integrating third-country graduates into Latvia’s labour market are primarily structural and systemic, shaped by fragmented policies and the absence of a coherent national approach. To address this, Latvia needs to move from a passive “education export” model toward a more strategic approach focused on attracting and retaining foreign talent. Higher education should be treated as a tool of economic transformation, with stronger alignment between international student recruitment, Latvia’s strategic development priorities, and smart specialisation areas.

Five preconditions for successful strategy:

  1. Strategic decision: “yes” or “no”

The most important first step is a clear political decision: are highly skilled third-country nationals a strategic resource for Latvia? Contradictory signals, especially between economic and security perspectives, need to be reduced. If the answer is “yes”, priority sectors should be clearly defined; if it’s a “no”, other solutions to labour shortages must be sought.

  1. Changing the narrative: from fear to benefits

Public discourse should shift from presenting immigration as a threat to recognising it as a contribution to Latvia’s long-term prosperity. Communication should be proactive and evidence-based, highlighting positive examples and helping reduce stereotypes in society.

  1. Language: from requirements to support

Language policy should move beyond passive requirement-setting and toward an active Latvian language-learning support system. This means creating an accessible learning infrastructure and using practical incentives that encourage students and graduates to learn Latvian.

  1. “Premium” education quality

To attract academically strong and motivated talent – rather than low-cost or transit-oriented students – Latvia must strengthen the quality and international competitiveness of its higher education. Study programmes should be more closely linked to research excellence and labour market demand.

  1. Building bridges through contact

The current “parallel worlds” divide between international students and employers, especially SMEs, needs to be reduced. More direct contact, cooperation, and structured opportunities for interaction are needed to build trust, improve understanding, and support smoother labour market integration.

Conclusion

International students represent an underutilised yet strategically important resource in Latvia’s response to demographic decline and persistent labour shortages. While the country has made significant progress in attracting foreign students, post-graduation retention remains weak due to language barriers, administrative complexity, limited access to the labour market, and fragmented institutional coordination.

Without a coordinated national approach, Latvia risks continuing to “export” locally educated specialists to other countries, effectively subsidising the human capital needs of competing economies. Addressing this challenge requires an integrated policy framework that bridges education, labour market, migration, and integration systems and aligns student attraction with long-term workforce needs.

Acknowledgements

The study “Retention of International Students in Latvia” was prepared with financial support from the Society Integration Foundation, using funds from the Latvian state budget, within the framework of the project “Retention of Foreign Talent in Latvia” (2025.LV/NVOF/MAC/123).

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Migration Shocks and Voting: Evidence from Ukrainian Migration to Poland

Posted on May 11, 2026 | Policy Brief

20240128 Ukrainian Refugees Image 05

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine triggered two massive inflows of Ukrainians into Poland: conflict-induced labor migration from 2014 onward and a mass refugee inflow after the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022. We study how local exposure to each shock reshaped voting in Poland. The findings show that greater exposure to labor migrants reduced support for conservative parties in the short run and subsequently shifted voters toward pro-redistribution parties. Both migration waves reduced far-right voting, but this effect emerged only after Ukrainian migrants became salient in public debate and the far-right Konfederacja party adopted anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. The backlash against the far-right is about ten times stronger in areas more exposed to refugees than in areas more exposed to labor migrants.

Two Migration Waves, One Origin Country

Europe has absorbed several large migration waves over the past decade, often followed by a shift to the right in domestic politics. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the largest war-induced migration in recent European history, and many of the new arrivals have settled in post-communist countries that had long been sources of emigration rather than destinations. Poland stands out: between 2014 and 2023, it experienced two unexpected and very different waves of Ukrainian migration, which provides a rare opportunity to see how distinct types of migration affect local politics.

Before February 2022, Russia’s 2014 aggression and the economic turmoil it produced pushed large numbers of Ukrainian workers into Poland. While these migrants were not necessarily low-skilled, they mostly filled low- and medium-skilled positions, complementing rather than competing with Poland’s abundant supply of highly educated workers (Zuchowski 2025). Crucially, they had no access to Polish social benefits. The situation changed abruptly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Over a million Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children fleeing an immediate threat to their lives, arrived in Poland. Under the EU Temporary Protection Directive, they received unrestricted access to the Polish labor market and to a broad set of social benefits. About 90 percent of Polish society supported taking in Ukrainian refugees in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. However, as war fatigue set in, the far-right Konfederacja party increasingly relied on anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, which became one of the defining features of its 2023 parliamentary campaign.

Measuring the Local Political Effects

We use county-level data to study how local exposure to each shock changed voting patterns in the Polish parliamentary elections of 2015, 2019, and 2023. Polish counties differ substantially in the number of Ukrainian workers and refugees they received, and we compare the change in vote shares since 2011 between counties with more and less exposure. Because migrants are not randomly distributed across counties, simply correlating migrant inflows with local outcomes could confuse cause and effect. For instance, migrants may settle where labor markets are already expanding. Thus, to isolate the causal effect of immigration, we use three instruments that predict where migrants settled for reasons unrelated to local economic conditions:  the distance to historical hotspots of Ukrainian networks created by the 1947 forced resettlement “Akcja Wisla”, the distance to the nearest Polish-Ukrainian border crossing, and a novel instrument based on the distance to the Polish cities that co-hosted UEFA Euro 2012. The intuition is that each of these instruments drew Ukrainians to certain locations through ethnic networks, lower travel costs, or the connections and visibility that the tournament generated, yet these historical and geographic features had no direct impact on contemporary voting behavior, allowing us to attribute observed effects to the migrant inflows. We classify Polish parties into three non-exclusive groups: conservative (versus liberal), pro-redistribution (versus pro-free market), and far-right (versus non-far-right).

Labor Migration: Away from Conservatives, Then Toward Redistribution

Figure 1 shows the estimated effect of local exposure to Ukrainian labor migrants on voting for the three party groups in the 2015, 2019, and 2023 parliamentary elections. The pattern is clearest for conservative parties: in the first election after the 2014 inflow, a one percentage point increase in the local share of Ukrainian workers is associated with a decrease in the combined conservative vote share of about 0.3 percentage points. For pro-redistribution parties, we detect no statistically significant movement in 2015, but by 2019, the same exposure corresponds to an increase of 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points. In other words, exposure to Ukrainian labor migrants first moved voters away from conservative parties and, over time, pulled them toward parties that promise more redistribution. Voting for far-right parties follows a different pattern. Through 2019, we detect no effect, even though Ukrainian workers had been arriving since 2014. Only in 2023, after Russia’s full-scale invasion made Ukrainian migration highly visible in public debate, does a negative effect on far-right voting emerge, with a one percentage point increase in the local share of labor migrants reducing far-right support by 0.15 to 0.27 percentage points. Empirical evidence on mechanisms from local labor markets provides an intuitive explanation for the first two results: counties more exposed to Ukrainian labor migrants experienced rising wages and falling unemployment, so voters first rewarded openness and then sought a stronger social safety net for themselves, knowing that labor migrants did not themselves draw on Polish social benefits.

Figure 1. Ukrainian labor migration and vote shares in Polish parliamentary elections (2015, 2019, 2023)

Source: Mykhailyshyna and Zuchowski (2026), Figure 2. Each point reports the estimated change in the local vote share of pro-redistribution, conservative, or far-right parties for a 1-percentage-point increase in the local share of Ukrainian labor migrants, using OLS and three instrumental-variables specifications (Akcja Wisla, Euro 2012, and Border). Bars show 95 percent confidence intervals.

Refugees: A Sharp Backlash Against the Far-right

The picture looks very different for the 2022 refugee inflow, summarized in Figure 2. Local exposure to Ukrainian refugees has no statistically significant effect on either the conservative or the pro-redistribution vote share in 2023. The null effect on redistribution fits the fact that, unlike earlier labor migrants, Ukrainian refugees were eligible for Polish social benefits: expanding redistribution would be shared with migrants rather than captured only by natives. The null effect on conservatives likely reflects the broad cross-party solidarity with Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, with both conservative and liberal parties initially taking a similar pro-refugee stance. What shows up strongly is an effect on the far-right: a one-percentage-point increase in the local share of Ukrainian refugees reduces the far-right vote share by 1.1 to 1.9 percentage points, roughly ten times the corresponding effect for labor migrants. The most likely explanation combines political salience with direct contact. During the 2023 campaign, the far-right Konfederacja party made opposition to Ukrainian refugees a central theme, using slogans such as “Poland only for Poles” and attacking government spending on refugee aid. In counties with more direct exposure to refugees, that rhetoric appears to have backfired: voters who had personally seen Ukrainian refugees integrate into local labor markets and daily life became less, not more, receptive to anti-Ukrainian messaging, a pattern consistent with Allport’s contact hypothesis (Allport 1954).

Figure 2. Ukrainian refugee inflow and vote shares in the 2023 Polish parliamentary election

Source: Mykhailyshyna and Zuchowski (2026), Figure 3. Each point reports the estimated change in the local vote share of pro-redistribution, conservative, or far-right parties for a one percentage point increase in the local share of Ukrainian refugees (based on PESEL registrations), using OLS and three instrumental-variable specifications (Akcja Wisla, Euro 2012, and Border). Bars show 95 percent confidence intervals.

Conclusion

Ukrainian migration to Poland shows that the political effect of immigration depends not only on how many migrants arrive but also on who they are, how they integrate into local labor markets, and how salient they become in national debate. Labor migrants who complemented Polish workers moved voters away from conservatives and, over time, toward pro-redistribution parties. Refugees who were highly visible, eligible for social benefits, and explicitly targeted by far-right rhetoric triggered a strong backlash against the far-right in areas with direct contact. These results cut against the assumption that migrant inflows mechanically strengthen anti-immigrant parties: under the right conditions, local contact and a positive economic experience can push voters in the opposite direction. For policymakers designing refugee and migration frameworks in the EU and beyond, the Polish case suggests that integration into local labor markets, clear rules on access to benefits, and the nature of political discourse around migrants matter at least as much as the sheer scale of inflows.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Post-2020 Belarusian Permanent Migration to the EU and Beyond: An Empirical Assessment

Posted on April 27, 2026 | Policy Brief

Minsk International Airport facade with a passenger aircraft reflected in the glass.

Following the 2020 presidential election, Belarus experienced a sharp increase in outward migration, primarily to the European Union, with Poland and Lithuania becoming the main destination countries. However, the official migration statistics suffer from limitations and inconsistencies. The brief provides an empirical assessment of the scale of Belarusian migration after 2020. The results indicate that 400–418 thousand Belarusians live and/or work in the EU, Russia, and Georgia. The migration significantly affects host countries’ labour markets and social systems, particularly in Poland. In turn, for Belarus, it represents substantial forgone economic potential, with estimated output losses exceeding 3.4% of GDP.

Introduction

After the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, outward migration increased significantly. Belarusian citizens left the country for both political and economic reasons, with the European Union, particularly Poland and Lithuania, becoming one of the main destinations. Belarusian migrants have become a significant source of labour supply in Poland and Lithuania, helping alleviate labour shortages in economies experiencing demographic decline. At the same time, a sizable outward migration is likely to affect both Belarus’ demographic dynamics and the economic outcomes. In this sense, estimating the number of Belarusians residing abroad is important for both host countries and Belarus itself. However, precise data on the number of Belarusians moving abroad after 2020 remains limited.

Existing international estimates provide only a partial picture. The World Migration Report includes both recent migrants and migrants who left Belarus decades ago and later acquired citizenship in other countries (WMR, 2024). It also relies on migration statistics that are not fully comparable across countries and are often available only with a time lag. As a result, these estimates do not capture the most recent migration wave that occurred after 2020.

Belarusian national statistics also underestimate migration flows, as they mainly record individuals who officially leave the country to work abroad under formal employment contracts (MIARB, 2025) .

This policy brief aims to address this gap by providing estimates of migration from Belarus between 2020 and 2024, based on data on residence permits issued in recipient countries, national migration statistics, information on citizenship acquisition, and open-source data. It accesses the number of Belarusian migrants in the main emigration destinations, namely the European Union, Russia, and Georgia, and discusses the implications for the host countries and Belarus.

Assessing Belarusian Migration to the EU

One of the most commonly used sources for analysing migration flows to the European Union is Eurostat data on the number of first permits. These permits indicate that a foreign national has received authorisation for a long-term stay in an EU country for the first time, typically for more than three months. They include various categories such as work permits, study permits, and other forms, including long-term visas. In many cases, the number of first permits corresponds broadly to the number of migrants entering and residing in a country. However, in some countries, there are significant differences between the number of first permits issued and the actual number of migrants. For example, this concerns Poland’s issuance of Poland Business Harbor Visas to Belarusians. The visa allowed Belarusians to live and work in Poland. However, not all visa recipients moved to the country. Many used it for short-term tourism and did not subsequently obtain temporary residence permits.

According to European statistics, more than 90 percent of first permits issued to Belarusian citizens in recent years were granted by Poland and Lithuania. For this reason, estimating the number of Belarusians residing in these two countries is central to assessing the scale of Belarusian migration to the EU.

Lithuania

Assessing the number of Belarusians residing in Lithuania is relevant in light of the ongoing demographic decline and its implications for labour supply. Fertility in Lithuania remains well below replacement level—around 1.1 children per woman in 2024—while population ageing continues to reduce the size of the workforce (Statistics Lithuania; IMF, 2024). The current labour market situation is relatively tight, with unemployment around 7% in 2024. Migration helps mitigate some labour market pressures without constituting a major source of labour supply (European Commission, 2025).

In this context, Belarusians have become the second-largest migrant group in Lithuania. Their numbers increased markedly after 2020, rising from fewer than 18 thousand at the end of 2019 (Migracijos metraštis, 2020) to 57.5 thousand by the end of 2024 (Imigrantai Lietuvoje, 2026).

Estimating the number of Belarusian residents in Lithuania is relatively straightforward because the Migration Department of the Ministry of Interior Affairs publishes detailed statistics on foreigners residing in the country. These data show a close relationship between the number of first permits issued and the growth in the Belarusian population in Lithuania. Between 2020 and 2023, the number of Belarusians living in Lithuania increased slightly less than the number of first permits issued, partly because some individuals work in Lithuania on a rotational basis while continuing to reside in Belarus. An exception occurred in 2022, when the Belarusian population in Lithuania increased more rapidly than the number of first permits issued to Belarusians following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the expansion of humanitarian migration channels. Since 2024, the number of Belarusians residing in Lithuania has declined, partly due to the tightening of migration policy (EMT, 2025).

Poland

Compared with Lithuania, Poland has stronger labour demand and even tighter labour market conditions, with significant dependence on migration. Despite a similarly low fertility rate (1.099 in 2024), unemployment remains low at 5.6% (November 2025), even with over one million foreign workers already present (Statistics Poland, 2025, 2026). Combined with population ageing and mounting pressures on social security and healthcare systems, this results in a structurally higher demand for migrant labour than in Lithuania. Against this backdrop, Belarusians—now the second-largest group of foreign workers after Ukrainians—play an important role. Only among social security contributors, their number has more than tripled in recent years – from 42.8 thousand in 2020 to 134.8 thousand in 2024 (ZUS).

However, accurately assessing the scale of Belarusian migration is challenging. Official statistics do not provide a direct measure of Belarusian residents. First residence permits significantly overestimate migration: between 2020 and 2024, Poland issued more than 874 thousand permits to Belarusian citizens, but many were used for short-term mobility rather than permanent relocation. Figure 1 illustrates the gap between the number of first permits issued and the number of residence permits held. At the same time, residence permit data underestimate the true population. Approximately 125 thousand Belarusians held valid residence permits at the end of 2024, increasing to 141.2 thousand at the beginning of 2026; however, these figures exclude individuals awaiting decisions, whose applications may take months or years to process while they remain in the country (USC, 2026).

Importantly, statistics based on social security contributions also underestimate the total number of Belarusians permanently residing in Poland, as they exclude non-working spouses, children, students, pensioners, and other inactive groups. At the same time, combining different administrative datasets would lead to double-counting, as the same individuals may appear in multiple categories—for example, as residence permit holders, applicants awaiting decisions, and recipients of social benefits—meaning that simple aggregation would inflate the total. As a result, neither the number of permits issued nor administrative records alone provide an accurate estimate of the Belarusian population in Poland.

Approaches to Determining the Number of Belarusians in Poland

Luzgina (2025a) suggests two approaches to estimate the number of Belarusians residing in Poland.

The first approach—the gender-statistical approach—is based on estimating the number of Belarusians permanently residing in Poland by taking into account the gender structure of Belarusian citizens holding documents for permanent stay in Poland, as well as estimating the number of young Belarusians under 18, using statistical data on recipients of the 800+ child benefit, which until 2026 was paid to all children under 18. The estimate based on this approach suggests that as of the end of 2024, between 172.8 and 181.1 thousand Belarusians permanently resided in Poland.

Figure 1. Dynamics of issuing first permits and residence permits by Poland to Belarusian citizens: thousands of people.

Source: Urząd do spraw cudzoziemców; Eurostat. Note: First permits are permits issued for initial entry, including long-term visas. Resident permits include temporary residence permits, permanent residence permits, blue cards, and residence cards—that is, permits foreigners obtain for residence in the country after they’ve already entered. Due to the fact that many Belarusians received Poland Business Harbor visas (first permits), but did not use them to obtain a residence permit in Poland, the number of residence permits issued is lower than the number of first permits.

The second approach—the socio-demographic approach—is used to verify the accuracy of these estimates. This approach is based on the analysis of statistics on social security contributions, the age structure of Belarusians in Poland, and their employment status. Key components include data on the number of taxpayers, children under 18, and Belarusians aged 18 and older who are not employed in the Polish labour market. According to this second approach, the number of Belarusians residing in Poland at the end of 2024 ranged from 175.6 to 188.5 thousand individuals.

Thus, based on both approaches, between 172.8 and 188.5 thousand Belarusian citizens entitled to permanent stay were permanently residing in Poland at the end of 2024.

The Total Number of Belarusians in the EU

Based on the above assessment of the total number of Belarusians residing in Poland, the known number residing in Lithuania, and the number who obtained first permits in other countries, it is possible to estimate the number of Belarusian citizens residing in the European Union. If EU statistics are considered, it can be noted that over the period 2016–2024, the share of first residence permits issued by EU countries excluding Lithuania and Poland averaged 7%. We can assume that the number of Belarusians residing in EU countries outside Poland and Lithuania approximately corresponds to this proportion.

In this regard, the total number of Belarusians residing in the EU at the end of 2024 was calculated assuming that approximately 93% of Belarusian citizens migrated to Lithuania and Poland. This results in an estimate of 247.6 thousand to 264.5 thousand individuals.

Based on available data on Polish citizenship obtained by Belarusians in 2020–2024, the total number of Belarusian citizens who do not yet hold citizenship or who obtained it relatively recently but permanently reside in the EU is between 265 thousand and 282 thousand individuals. Moreover, the majority of these individuals relocated to the EU in 2020–2024, a period marked by a significant increase in the number of first residence permits issued to Belarusians, primarily by Poland and Lithuania.

Migration Outside of the EU

Belarusians actively migrate not only to EU countries but also to other states such as Russia and Georgia. It is not possible to calculate how many Belarusian citizens currently live and work in Russia due to the absence of customs and border barriers and the lack of additional labour market legalisation requirements for citizens of the Union State. Nevertheless, there are general figures on the employment of Belarusians in the Russian labour market. As of 2023, approximately 124 thousand Belarusians were employed in Russia. An additional more than 12,000 resided in Georgia (Luzgina, 2025b). Taking these data into account, together with data for EU countries, between 400 and 418 thousand Belarusian citizens lived and worked outside Belarus. This amounts to approximately 4.5% of the country’s total population.

Implications of Belarusian Migration for Belarus

Together with data for EU countries, between 400 and 418 thousand Belarusian citizens lived and worked outside Belarus. This amounts to approximately 4.5% of the country’s total population. Estimating the share of Belarusians of working age (16–60 years) living and working in the countries under study based on the gender-age structure of Belarusians in Poland yields approximately 355 thousand individuals. This corresponds to more than 6% of the country’s total working-age population.

The forgone economic opportunities resulting from the emigration of working-age individuals can be assessed using the Solow growth accounting framework. The potential economic impact of the emigration of working-age Belarusians can be approximated as a static output loss, assuming that capital and total factor productivity remain unchanged. Based on the share of labour compensation in GDP at current national prices for Belarus in 2023 (0.57), and the estimated 6% reduction in the working-age population residing abroad, the immediate reduction in GDP may reach up to 3.42% (PWT 11.0).

Conclusion

Belarusians constitute the second-largest group of foreign nationals in Poland and Lithuania after Ukrainians. Belarusians also make a positive contribution to the labour markets of other EU countries, as well as to those of Russia and Georgia. Consequently, their residence in the host countries has a tangible impact not only on the labour market but also on social security systems, budget, and other sectors of the economy. Accurate data on the number of migrants, their age structure, and their participation in economic activity enable more effective forecasting of pressures on social systems and facilitate better planning of migrant integration into the host country’s economy.

In Belarus itself, the long-term emigration of working-age citizens and their families remains insufficiently accounted for, which distorts assessments of the country’s internal demographic situation and associated economic losses. Large-scale migration, including flows to Russia and Georgia, indicates that up to 6% of the working-age population currently resides outside the country, which, all else being equal, may reduce potential GDP growth by more than 3.42%.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Critical Minerals and the New Geopolitics of the Green Transition: Insights from Energy Talk 2026

Posted on April 22, 2026 | Policy Brief

The green transition promises to reduce Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels often produced in autocratic states, but it may also create new strategic dependencies. Technologies central to decarbonization — such as batteries, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar panels — rely on critical minerals whose mining and processing remain highly concentrated.

At the 2026 Energy Talk, “Critical Minerals and the New Geopolitics of the Green Transition”, organised by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) in collaboration with the FREE Network, leading researchers and industry representatives examined these tensions from three perspectives: the geopolitical significance of Ukraine’s mineral endowment; the regulatory and distributional challenges of Sweden’s mining sector; and the sustainability and competitiveness pressures facing European firms in critical mineral supply chains. This policy brief summarises the main takeaways from the event.

Background

A central promise of the green transition is to reduce Europe’s exposure to geopolitical risk. For decades, dependence on fossil fuels — concentrated in a handful of autocratic or semi-autocratic states — had made European democracies structurally vulnerable to political coercion. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought that vulnerability into sharp relief, accelerating a shift toward renewable energy that climate advocacy alone had struggled to achieve. For the first time, the moral case for decarbonisation and the strategic case for energy security pointed in the same direction.

Yet as the transition accelerates, a new question has moved to the centre of European policy debate: are we escaping one dependency only to construct another? The technologies at the heart of decarbonisation — batteries, wind turbines, electric vehicles, solar panels — depend on critical minerals whose deposits are geographically concentrated and whose processing is dominated, to a degree that should give pause, by a single external power. The logic is uncomfortably familiar. The material has changed; the structural problem has not.

At the same time, many of the raw materials needed for the green transition are known to exist in Europe. What is lacking is not geological potential but a clear idea of how to navigate trade-offs between economic and possibly environmental costs in developing capacity in Europe, and potential future strategic vulnerabilities.

This policy brief grows out of the 2026 Energy Talk, Critical Minerals and the New Geopolitics of the Green Transition, organised by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) in collaboration with the FREE Network. The event brought together leading researchers and industry representatives to examine these tensions from three angles: the geopolitical stakes surrounding Ukraine’s significant but embattled mineral endowment; the regulatory and distributional obstacles that prevent Sweden — despite its considerable deposits — from translating geological wealth into production; and the sustainability and competitiveness pressures bearing down on European firms operating in critical mineral supply chains.

From Fossil Fuel Dependency to Mineral Dependency: The Geopolitical Stakes

Jesper Roine, Adjunct Professor at Stockholm School of Economics and Deputy Director of SITE, opened by framing critical minerals as a central geopolitical challenge of the green transition. As Roine noted, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 succeeded in making resource dependency an urgent political issue in a way that years of climate advocacy had not. The transition to renewables offers structural relief: unlike fossil fuels, often concentrated in autocratic states, wind and sunlight are globally distributed. Yet the minerals required to build renewable infrastructure are themselves geographically concentrated, and their processing is, to an alarming degree, dominated by a single power. Europe risks replacing one form of dependency with another unless it navigates this landscape carefully.

Jiayi Zhou, Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), provided a broader geopolitical perspective, drawing on two recent SIPRI reports. She argued that critical minerals have undergone a threefold transformation: politicisation, securitisation, and militarisation. What began as industrial policy to reduce dependence on Chinese processing has increasingly shifted toward zero-sum security arguments and, more recently, into direct links with conflict dynamics — in Ukraine, the DRC, and in Trump-era manoeuvres around Greenland and Venezuela. This fragmentation risks slowing the green transition globally and squeezing resource-rich developing countries caught between great powers. One discussed example was the US reportedly considering withholding HIV aid to Zambia unless it expanded access to minerals for American investors — a dynamic Zhou called a race to the bottom.

Ukraine’s Mineral Potential and the Imperative of Industrial Integration

Zhou went on to argue that Ukraine sits at the intersection of these pressures. Russian-occupied territories are estimated to contain 40 to 50 per cent of the assessed value of Ukraine’s critical mineral deposits. Russia’s 2024 Minerals Development Plan explicitly targets integrating those resources into the Russian economy, while the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund extends preferential access to American investors amid simultaneous US outreach to Russia on business opportunities. Zhou concluded that the EU is the least equipped among the great powers to compete in a world of militarised resource mercantilism, though it retains normative and standards-based appeal. Ukraine risks becoming a casualty of great-power competition rather than a beneficiary.

Olha Evstigneeva, PhD researcher in climate economics at the Institute for Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Development Director at the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy, and Decarbonisation Expert, spoke from Kyiv. She described Ukraine as undergoing an accelerated and involuntary transition that other countries have yet to fully engage with. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism already affects roughly 20 per cent of Ukraine’s exports, with around 70 per cent now directed to the EU. “This is no longer about going green,” she noted, but about “controlling value chains, markets, and industrial competitiveness.” Despite losing 30 to 40 gigawatts of generation capacity as a result of the war, Ukraine has continued to advance its climate and EU integration agenda. This includes 61 per cent implementation of EU renewable energy legislation, roughly 85 per cent alignment with its 2030 targets, and the fastest deployment of energy storage in Europe.

On minerals, Evstigneeva urged realism. Ukraine holds significant reserves of lithium, graphite, titanium, manganese, and iron ore, but much of the underlying geological data dates from the 1980s and 1990s and falls short of current investment standards. Confirming a single deposit requires USD 100-300 million and 10-12 years, an especially difficult task under wartime conditions. Ukraine’s lithium is hard-rock spodumene, which requires more energy-intensive processing at a time when the electricity system is severely damaged. The strategic question, she argued, is not whether Ukraine has resources, but whether it will remain a raw material supplier or become part of Europe’s industrial base. She proposed a phased model: extraction and primary processing first, refining and components next, and full battery value-chain integration over time. She also noted that Ukraine’s rapidly expanding drone industry and broader military technology sector are creating domestic demand for many of these same materials. In this sense, critical minerals are no longer just about energy transition but also about technological sovereignty.

Sweden: The Gap Between Mineral Potential and Mining Reality

Sweden holds some of Europe’s most significant mineral deposits, including rare earth elements, iron ore, copper, nickel, and lithium. Alongside Finland, Norway, and Greenland, it has the potential to supply a substantial share of the critical raw materials Europe requires. Yet turning that geological potential into production has proved persistently difficult. The presentations by Maria Sunér, CEO of Svemin, the Swedish Association of Mines, Mineral and Metal Producers, and Daniel Spiro, Professor of Economics at Uppsala University, pointed to a common diagnosis: Sweden has the geology, the institutions, and the technological capactity, but lacks a regulatory and distributional framework that allows mining to work for investors, local communities, and the state alike.

Sunér set Sweden’s mining sector within a broader European context. Europe produces only around 3 per cent of the raw materials it consumes, while accounting for 25 per cent of global production. Sweden alone accounts for 90 per cent of the EU’s iron ore production, yet Europe still imports 70 per cent of its iron ore needs. China, meanwhile, dominates key processing stages, including over 60 per cent of cobalt processing and more than 90 per cent of rare earth refining. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act set targets of 10 per cent domestic extraction and 40 per cent domestic processing, but Sunér argued that these are unlikely to be reached under current conditions. Sweden has just 13 active metal mines, and the most recent opened only two years ago, the first in more than a decade. Environmental permitting alone can take seven years, and a full mining project typically takes 15 to 35 years from exploration to production. Four fully permitted mines are currently still seeking final financing. According to Sunér, the main obstacles are the regulatory framework and limited access to capital, particularly for early-stage projects, an area in which Sweden lacks the financing culture found in countries such as Canada or Australia.

Spiro approached the issue from an economic perspective and identified two structural barriers. First, local communities and landowners have little incentive to support extraction. Under Sweden’s current system, landowners receive only 0.15 per cent of the value of minerals extracted from their land, while bearing the environmental costs of hosting a mine. Their main source of leverage, therefore, lies in delaying projects through the regulatory process rather than in negotiated compensation. Second, private investment is discouraged by a hold-up problem: exploration involves high upfront costs and uncertain returns, while a highly profitable discovery may trigger political pressure to revise the tax or royalty regime after the fact. Such uncertainty weakens incentives for long-term investment. The result is a paradox: Sweden has favourable geology, political stability, high human capital, and one of the world’s more generous investor profit-sharing systems, yet private investment remains limited, and firms still argue that conditions are not attractive enough.

To break this deadlock, Spiro outlined three regulatory alternatives. The first is state-led exploration and extraction, with revenues redistributed to local communities. This could help address both the hold-up problem and local opposition, though potentially at the cost of efficiency. The second would require local communities and landowners to conduct exploration themselves, giving them ownership of any discoveries and thereby aligning their interests with project outcomes. The third — Spiro’s preferred approach — adapts elements of the Norwegian model: exploration and investment would be susbsidised by a set percentage, matched by an equivalent excess-profit tax to preserve investment neutrality; a nationally owned company would participare as co-investor to increase transparency and reduce the risk of retroactive rule changes; revenues would be shared with host communities; and projects would be required to carry comprehensive environmental insurance covering long-term liabilities after mine closure.

In the discussion, Sunér challenged some of Spiro’s premises. She noted that Sweden’s environmental code is already among the strictest in the world, and cited polling suggesting that around half of Swedes would accept living near a mine. She also emphasised that 90 to 97 per cent of mine employees at most Swedish sites are local residents. Still, both speakers agreed that the core question remains unresolved: how to ensure that host communities genuinely benefit from large extractive investments. In this respect, mining reflects a broader challenge that Sweden shares with other sectors affected by large-scale industrial projects.

European Firms: Navigating Competitiveness, Sustainability and Geopolitics

Aaron Maltais, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), presented findings from a 2026 paper in Business Strategy and the Environment, based on interviews with companies downstream in critical mineral supply chains, including utilities, wind and solar firms, battery manufacturers, EV producers, and defence companies. He began with a striking illustration of the material intensity of modern technologies: a single 171-gram smartphone requires around 125 kilograms of mined rock. Scaled to the batteries and clean technologies needed for the green transition, the resulting material demands are staggering.

The firms interviewed were broadly committed to sustainable supply chain management and often saw synergies between sustainability and competitiveness. As one battery-sector respondent put it: “You can’t sell on one end a product for the energy transition and pollute endlessly on the other.” Companies identified human rights, conflict minerals, forced labour, and carbon emissions as key priorities, although the discussion also revealed a tendency to focus more heavily on carbon, partly due to data availability. Corporate practice has also evolved, from reactive controversy management to more systematic risk prioritisation, and from auditing first-tier suppliers to engaging more directly with upstream mining companies. Recycling of critical raw materials was widely viewed as important, but current capacity remains far below what is needed. Europe has roughly one-tenth of the recycling capacity required to meet its 2031 targets, and many planned projects face financing and technical barriers.

EU legislation was broadly welcomed for harmonising standards and reinforcing the credibility of sustainability requirements. At the same time, companies pointed to an overlapping and sometimes contradictory regulatory landscape. For example, pressure to meet EU fleet-emissions targets could lead automakers to relax supply chain sustainability standards to source enough vehicles quickly. Geopolitical dependency was another major concern, particularly where firms saw little real alternative to Chinese suppliers. Firms are responding through vertical integration and longer-term purchase agreements, but these measures do not eliminate underlying structural dependencies. Maltais concluded that the EU needs greater policy coherence across industrial strategy, due diligence legislation, and sustainability objectives, alongside stronger international standards and more credible multi-stakeholder initiatives with genuine civil society participation.

Concluding Remarks

The picture that emerges from the day’s discussions could easily be read as cause for alarm — yet the event pointed toward pragmatism rather than pessimism. The trajectory of Europe’s green transition, while broadly positive, is neither assured nor without risk. Resource endowments are the easier part. Governance, institutions, investment frameworks, distributional fairness, and political will are what determine whether mineral wealth becomes a foundation for resilience — or a new source of vulnerability.

Speakers

  • Jesper Roine – Adjunct Professor, Stockholm School of Economics; Deputy Director, SITE
  • Jiayi Zhou – Senior Researcher, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
  • Olha Evstigneeva – PhD Researcher in Climate Economics, Institute for Economics and Forecasting, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Development Director at the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy and Decarbonisation Expert
  • Maria Sunér – CEO, Svemin, the Swedish Association of Mines, Mineral and Metal Producers
  • Daniel Spiro – Professor of Economics, Uppsala University
  • Aaron Maltais – Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
  • Chloé Le Coq – Professor, Paris Panthéon-Assas University; Research Fellow, SITE (Moderator)

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.