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Home > ECML-Programme > Programme 2020-2023 > Crossborder vocational education > Border regions > LT-PL

Lithuania - Poland - Latvia

The border region at a glance

  • Lithuania has four borders with Latvia, Belarus, Poland and Russia. The borders shared with Latvia and Poland are friendly (see glossary for definitions of hostile and friendly borders), those shared with Belarus and Russia have become hostile in recent years. In the following study focuses on Lithuania and its borders with Latvia and Poland.
  • Lithuania has approximately 2.7 million inhabitants (2023).
  • official languages: Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian

Language situation

  • There is no official statistical information available on the daily number of commuters crossing borders between Lithuania and Poland or Lithuania and Latvia. According to Eurostat (2021), regional commuting among employed Lithuanians aged 15 to 64 is common (11%), whereas cross-border commuting is rare.
  • Claimed nationalities in the Lithuanian border region are: Lithuanian (86.4%), Polish (5.7%), Russian (4.5%), Belarusian (1.5%), Ukrainian (1%), and other nationalities (0.4%). Nonetheless, 96% of inhabitants claimed Lithuanian to be their native language and 4% claimed they were bilingual (Official Statistics Portal, 2019).
  • The latest thorough linguistic analysis by the Research Council of Lithuania (2013) revealed that 35% of Lithuanians claim to know Polish. At the same time, the participants of the study claimed that learning or knowing Latvian was not important to them. See the references for more information on linguistic distribution and language policies. 

 

Bibliography

References in English

Annotated bibliography

Specifics and Methodological Guidelines for the Assessment of Economic and Social Development of the Lithuanian-Latvian Border Region (2012)

Business Cooperation in the Cross-border region of Klaipeda region and Latvia (2012)

Assessing the Attractiveness of Business Development in Border Regions from the Infrastructure Aspect (2012)

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