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.

• The ECHR requested the government to provide information regarding facts in application lodged in 2011 by five non-citizens who received lower pensions than citizens in the same circumstances

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) requested Latvian government to provide information regarding the facts in the application lodged in 2011 by five non-citizens of Latvia who received lower pensions than citizens of Latvia in the same circumstances. The application concerns Article 1 of the transitional provisions of the law "On State Pensions", which stipulate that the period of work and obligatory military service accrued in the USSR outside of Latvia up to 31 December 1990 is counted into the length of insurance of citizens, but not of the persons without Latvian citizenship. The applicants already exhausted available national remedies, including application to the Constitutional Court, which on 17 February 2011 ruled that the said provision complies to Article 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in conjunction with Article 1 of the Protocol No. 1. The applicants also referred to 2009 judgement by the ECHR Grand Chamber, which ruled in a similar case of Andrejeva v. Latvia, that the said provision grants entitlement to pension for employment up to 1991 in the USSR outside of Latvia, and concluded that by refusing this entitlement because Ms. Andrejeva was a non-citizen, Latvia violated Article 14 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Co-chairman of the Latvian Human Rights Committee Vladimirs Buzajevs highlights that the government did not amend national legislation to comply with the ECHR ruling and alleges that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe ignores the problem. Vesti Segodnya