At the end of April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Latvia would resume funding to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees in various countries.
The MP and candidate for the European Parliament elections Edvīns Šnore (the National Alliance party) made a statement on a TikTok video claiming that thousands of "illegal immigrants" arrive in England by boat every day and that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has forbidden the country to "send them back to Africa". This is not true.
In the middle of the week, claims appeared on social media that under the influence of the Green Deal the government will ban the use of wood, pellets and briquettes for heating private homes. This is not true – there are no such plans. The false claims were spread on the internet by Tālis Linkaits, the former Minister for Transport and now a candidate for the European Parliament from the New Conservative Party (Jaunā konservatīvā partija), and a number of politicians from the Latvia First party (Latvija pirmajā vietā).
Last week, MP Mārcis Jencītis (Latvija pirmajā vietā party) scared his Facebook followers saying that the World Health Organisation's (WHO) pandemic agreement, which is still in the making, threatens national sovereignty. Similar claims have been made for several years, but without any evidence.
On Thursday 14 December, MEPs will vote on a EU Council legislation aimed at preventing cases where one EU member state recognises a child's parental rights but others do not. With the vote approaching, the website NRA.lv published a misleading article stating that the European Parliament would abolish the concept of a "father" and a "mother".
At the beginning of December, Munich was paralysed by a snow storm. A video of a small private plane being cleared of snow by rescue services at the Munich Airport was widely shared on social media. The video was accompanied by a claim that the plane was frozen to the ground and, ironically, was scheduled to fly to the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai. But none of this is true. The plane was not meant to go to Dubai, it was not frozen to ground, and even if it had been, that would not prove that climate change is not real.