Fact-check project reviews Šlesers' calculations on Estonia's budget revenue comparison

Since around autumn 2024, Ainārs Šlesers, leader of the "Latvia First" party, has repeatedly cited Estonia as proof that Latvia's state budget could collect significantly more revenue. Over time, the specific figure he has quoted for this potential gap has shifted — starting at eight billion euros, then nine, before settling on ten billion euros.

The argument

Šlesers' reasoning rests on the fact that Estonia has a considerably smaller population than Latvia, yet its state budget revenue is higher. His proposed thought experiment is to take Estonia's budget revenue figures and recalculate them proportionally as if Estonia had Latvia's population size.

Following this recalculation, Šlesers arrives at a hypothetical figure of roughly 25 billion euros for what Latvia could theoretically collect. He then compares this to Latvia's actual current budget revenue of around 15 billion euros. The gap between these two numbers produces the ten billion euros he frequently references as money Latvia is effectively missing out on.

The fact-check

The "Faktomāts" project set out to verify this calculation, comparing the politician's figures against official statistical data on state budget revenue and population size for both Estonia and Latvia. The aim of the review is to determine how accurate and well-founded Šlesers' publicly repeated calculations are, given that they are used as an argument in political debate about Latvia's budget revenue potential.