Dear visitor, Welcome to the website of the Netherlands Embassy in Riga. I hope it will provide answers to all your questions. If you should have more questions than this site can answer, do not hesitate to contact us by telephone or e-mail. Although I had many very interesting meetings with a great variety of representatives of Latvian society during my first six months in Riga, the highlight was undoubtedly the celebration of the 90th anniversary of Latvian independence. The 18th of November 2008 was a special day, both festive and solemn; as is the - very enjoyable - tradition here, many musical interludes of the highest quality added lustre to the event. A colour party of the Royal Netherlands Navy showed the flag during the military parade on the Embankment and a few days earlier President Zatlers conferred an important decoration on Mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam. The Mayor received the ‘Cross of Recognition’ as a token of appreciation for his efforts on behalf of the very successful twinning between both capitals. Early December, long and complicated negotiations of Latvia with Japan, Austria and The Netherlands finally bore fruit: in an innovative environmental, project, which will set an important example to other nations, Latvia sold 30 million Euro’s worth of CO2 emission rights to these trio of highly industrialized countries. Unfortunately, in the same period the global financial and economic crisis made itself felt in Latvia. Nevertheless, I remain confident that the many intensive relations between our two countries, for instance, in the fields of trade promotion and culture, will not be affected unduly by the inevitable uncertainties and cutbacks. In any case, the Embassy is preparing for a number of bilateral projects in the context of ‘Holland Days 2009’: the renowned reed quintet ‘Calefax’ of the Netherlands will give a concert in Riga on 3 April and in May a repeat performance of the successful bicycle joint-venture with the European Commission will be organized. Obviously, also this year we will celebrate our national day, ‘Koninginnedag’, (on Wednesday, 29 April) and the Embassy plans to contribute to the manifestations, organized to mark five years of EU membership of Latvia. So, may I invite you to check this website regularly for updates and details of events and manifestations ‘Made in Holland’?   Jurriaan Kraak Ambassador January 2009