It was with a mixture of tribulation and anticipation that, in May 2004, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – which had only 14 years earlier operated under a Soviet communist regime – joined the European Union (EU).
With only the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland separating Scandinavia from the Baltic states, the legal market has been keeping a watchful eye on whether EU accession would be the starting gun for a charge by Scandinavian companies into this commercially underdeveloped territory.
