Regional Project on Labour Relations and Social Dialogue Annual Review 2014 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ­Labour Relations and Social Dialogue Author: Dr. Aija Lulle 1 , Researcher at the University of Latvia Executive Summary In 2015 all three Baltic States will be using euro currency: Estonia joined the first, in 2011; Latvia did it on 1 st January 2014, while in Lithuania follows a year later, on 1 st January 2015 and becomes the 19 th member of the euro zone(Lietuvos Bankas, 2014). Latvia will be the presiding country of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2015. At the macro level, all three Baltic States still continued to demonstrate recovery from economic and financial crisis with the GDP growth forecasts for Estonia 1.9%, for Latvia 2.7% and for Lithuania 2.7% in 2014. However, at the second part of 2014 the geopolitical tensions in Russia and Ukraine and subsequent EU sanctions on Russia made a negative impact also on the Baltic states. Shadow economy in the Baltic states is estimated around 15%-27% of GDP according to different estimations in 2013-2014. According to the UNDP Human development reports in 2014 Estonia remained in the 33 th place as it was also a year ago, Latvia was occupying the 48 th place, while Lithuania improved from the 44 th place in 2013 up to 35 in 2014. Trade unions(TU) in the Baltic states still remain generally weak. General perception in the Baltics is the discourse that trade unions are not powerful players. However, in 2014 there were positive trends: for example, in Lithuania the Labour Code and other labour related laws were changed thanks to TU influence. 1 Dr. Aija Lulle, born in Latvia in 1975, is the director of the Diaspora and Migration Research Centre and researcher at the University of Latvia. She has studied also at the Stockholm University(2011) and was a visiting researcher at the London Metropolitan University, Working Lives Research Institute(2012). She cooperates with the Working Lives Research Institute, the International Organization for Migration, OECD, the Council of the Baltic Sea States and others, as a national expert on migration and labour market issues.