Integration monitor is a daily Latvian press digest on ethnic minority and society integration issues. The Monitor reviews the biggest Latvian dailies: Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga (in Latvian language), Vesti Segodnya (in Russian language). In specific cases other information sources are used. Latvian Centre for Human Rights is not responsible for information published by the media.

• Governing coalition agreed to tighten the system of granting residence permits
• Activists for rights of Russian speakers in Latvia attended the session of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting
• Ambassador of Israel: restitution of Jewish properties is Latvian internal issue

Under the pressure of the nationalists’ union All for Latvia!/FF-LNIM and the threats not to support the state budget for next year, the governing coalition agreed to tighten the system of granting residence permits to foreign investors. According to the agreement, the residence permits further will be granted with quotas. Thus, in 2014, the quotas will include 700 deals with real estate in a value of EUR 150,000-500,000 and 100 deals in value over EUR 500,000.

Vesti Segodnya reports that several activists for rights of Russian speakers in Latvia attended the session of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting held on 4 October.According a representative of the Parliament of Unrepresented Aleksandrs Gaponenko, at the session he presented a report on ethnic relations and non-citizens in Latvia. Mr Gaponenko asserted that there are ethnic conflicts and repressions in Latvia which concern also such small nation as Latgalians who do not even have education in their own language. Mr Gaponenko also stated that ethnic conflicts in Baltic states have open nature and soon real resistance might raise.

The Ambassador of Israel in Latvia and Lithuania Hagit Ben-Jakov in an interview with Neatkariga stated that Israel do not interfere in the issue of restitution of Jewish properties because it is internal affair and should be solved by the Latvian authorities and local Jewish community. The Ambassador also believes that it is important that Latvians understand what happened during Holocaust in Latvia, about Latvian citizens who were brutally killed by Nazis and some local collaborators.