It is quite rare to find ministers among the politicians who share my memes on social media; Baiba Braže, incumbent Latvian minister of foreign affairs (MFA) and former ambassador, is one of them, a sign that she has some sense of humor and a very direct communication style.
Braže, a career diplomat, has been minister since April 2024, when she replaced former PM Krišjānis Kariņš, who resigned due to the misuse of state funds for expensive private flights. All my Latvian friends praised her work: “I didn’t expect a former ambassador to be so outspoken and active”.
Reading about her, I grew more and more curious and I decided to contact her. After a few messages, we set up an appointment. I reach Riga in one of the coldest days of the year: the Daugava river has frozen over and the temperature outside reaches -20°C.
The meeting place is a cosy café near the ministry, where I am sitting for a quick briefing with her advisors Tomass and Signe. Braže walks in with grace; some customers recognize her, smiling and nodding in her direction. In a small country like Latvia (1.9 million people), politicians are closer to their voters and can do something absolutely normal like going to a café by themselves.
We order some hot tea and start chatting. She’s curious about DG MEME, how I started it and what its goal is. “I do like memes”, she says, “but I also love cartoons, especially political ones, and comics, I’ve been reading them since I was a child”.
Braže was born in 1966 in Riga. She spent her summers with her grandparents, in the little village of Bārta, near the Lithuanian border. “It was quite common back then for children to spend June-August in the countryside. It was fun but we also had to do some real work, like gardening, helping at home and milking the cows”.
At twelve, Braže started practising javelin throwing, significantly reducing her time at the countryside: “A trainer came to school and evaluated the students. I was selected for javelin and I continued to practise it for another ten years”. A passion that didn’t fade over the years: in her office one can find the javelin gifted to her by the Latvian Athletics Association.
Being an athlete during the Cold War was challenging.
“It was hard work, you can’t succeed without hard work, that’s what sport teaches you. In javelin throwing, you practise all winter to be ready for competition in spring. Javelin season starts at the beginning of May. That’s why the Latvian team often went to practice in Georgia, where the weather was warmer”.
Braže stopped throwing javelin because of an injury. “Maybe it was better like that. At that level, where they selected those who would represent the USSR, there were many athletes who were obviously, ehm, artificially improving their condition“.
In addition to her sporting commitments, Braže began studying law in 1985. “Back then, the Soviet Union was still strong, despite the sudden leadership changes: Brezhnev had died (1982, ed), Andropov had died (1984, ed), Chernenko had died (1985, ed), it was a crazy time, but when you are a student you find your ways to isolate yourself from the Soviet reality, trying to enjoy student life: events, sports, Latvian theater.”
Culture, literature and theater played a central role in the Latvian National Awakening, becoming a space for coded resistance and national self-assertion. “In those performances we always found a way to present some Latvian culture, it was the best way to preserve our identity against the russification attempts”. The stage was one of the few public arenas where Latvian collective emotions were tolerated.
Latvian culture and traditions have been part of Braže’s life since childhood: her grandmother was a member of the Bārta’s folklore ensemble and a school teacher. “These folklore groups preserved our songs, dances and traditions through the centuries, which was of course problematic for the Soviet regime”.
The many attempts to russify Latvia were fortunately unsuccessful. “The winds of change arrived with Gorbachev: freedom of speech was tolerated. I remember the first protest article (Dainis Ivāns and Artūrs Snips. “Thinking About the Fate of the Daugava”, Literatūra un Māksla, 17 October 1986, ed). The author, a renowned engineer, criticized Moscow for ordering the construction of an hydroelectric plant, pointing out the environmental damage this would have caused to the Daugava river and to its beautiful meanders. The project was stopped and that’s when we realized that people could make a difference”.
This realization led to the period known as National Awakening, when more and more people shown their Latvian heritage: “It was not allowed to bring the Latvian flag to folk concerts, but we still managed to hide them in our long dresses. Waving them during the concert was some sort of a resistence. A student from my class, I think it was in 1986, was expelled from university because he tried to replace the Soviet flag with the Latvian one”.
This pursuit of freedom led to the creation of the Popular Front (Tautas Fronte), a political movement that advocated for the independence of Latvia from the Soviet Union. Braže was active in the movement. “Our professors were the brains behind the Popular Front. We needed a strong legal basis to prove that we were an occupied country and to demand the restoration of the Republic of Latvia. We had to explain to the international community that we were not a new country, we were simply restoring the old Republic, the Parliament, the Constitution, the currency. Smart work was required”.
The Front sent their representatives to the People’s congress of the Soviet Union, the new legislative body created in 1988 to replace the Supreme Soviet. “Things were changing also in Moscow and we wanted to be part of that change. The Latvian delegation had one simple purpose: to denounce the Soviet occupation of Latvia in front of the congress. Even some Russian speakers said that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was illegitimate. It was the first time that the concept of the Soviet Union was challenged, not only by the Baltic States”.
In case my readers are wondering, all the Latvian representatives came back from Moscow alive. “With the Popular Front Latvians had the feeling that we couldn’t be stopped. When half the population is protesting in the streets there is nothing the rulers can do to oppose it”.
This led to the Baltic Way, my favorite peaceful manifestation, when two million people joined hands to form a 600-kilometre human chain across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, demanding independence from Soviet rule. “All my generation was involved in that, I was standing near Matisa Market (one of the main markets of Riga, ed). There were so many people, I remember we sent some friends to save us some space but then other people came and they were standing in front of us. Of course, in the countryside it was a bit more stretched out. It’s incredible when you think about that we organized the whole thing via radio and telephone landline”.
After graduating, Braže started working as legal consultant, but this was not easy because of the economic crisis: the Russian Federation used energy and trade pressure against the Baltic states to influence their break from the Soviet Union. “We were deeply integrated in the Soviet economy and removing those ties took time. Also, Russian troops only left in 1994. To make a living I also sold apples in the market and worked as a cleaning lady. Everything was changing quickly. For the first time, the faculty of history had a course in political science, which didn’t exist under the Soviet Union, as it was a one-state party. And that’s when I decided I wanted to study more. A few months later, I was offered a Tempus scolarship to study at the university of Groningen and that changed my life”.
In the Netherlands, Braže studied international law and European integration. “That’s when I decided I wanted to work for the foreign ministry, European law was such a vast and interesting subject. Living abroad I discovered that I could be a good student just like any other student from the west, which was good for my Eastern Bloc inferiority complex”.
After graduation, Braže entered the legal department of the ministry of foreign affairs. In 1999, she became deputy Head of the taskforce responsible for the Latvian EU accession negotiations. “I can’t tell you all the details, because I am not sure if they’re still classified, but it was a very intense time and even fun, in some sense. Derogation was a tough one: every candidate country can ask for temporary delays in applying EU law on specific topics. We were very happy that the Finns kept the right to shoot wolves, becase we also have a lot of wolves. We were hoping the Swedes would also get a derogation on something useful for us, but they just chose to keep selling snus (a smokeless tobacco that is placed under the upper lip, ed). In the end, we focused on Riga sprats, our prized delicatessen. Latvians, together with Estonians, secured that only small boats are allowed to fish sprats in the Riga Gulf, giving priority to the local fishermen”.
But EU accession is not only about meeting deadlines and implementing the acquis. “We had to keep the Commission happy and we entertained numerous officials and delegations, trying to explain to them that we’re not some part of Russia. One time we had a Portuguese official who was really curious about Riga. It was Monday evening and we went to the old town. It was completely full, people were dancing in the bar to some latin music. ‘Wow, this is on a Monday evening, why am I not living here?’ he said”.
Latvia held its referendum for joining the EU on 20 September 2003. “We had to change the constitution to allow that, because in the original version from 1922, international agreements didn’t require a referendum”. 67% of the voters chose to join the EU.
Braže became ambassador to the Netherlands in 2003 and that’s where she met her husband, the Dutch diplomat Tjaco van den Hout, who was at the time the head of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. She is very reserved about her private life but a cute anecdote of one of their first meetings deserves a mention: “He noticed me on one of the first receptions so he was, let’s say, attentive. A few days later, I was driving in my car and he almost crashed me with his bike. And I said: ‘Hello, Mr. Secretary-General, how are you doing?’. Later, we went for a coffee and that’s how our story began”.
Van den Hout became ambassador to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar and Braže followed him with their daughter. “During this time away I had the opportunity to study Thai buddhism and Thai language and travel extensively. I was the first Latvian to meet Aung San Suu Kyi (1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of the main actors in Myanmar’s transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s, ed). She told me during her house arrest that she was able to listen to the BBC and she followed the protests in the Baltic States at the end of the 80’s, which she found very inspiring”.
Braže is Christian but during her years in South East Asia she got closer to Buddhism as a discipline: “Non-attachment (accepting that everything changes and that clinging to what changes causes pain, ed) and moderation (trying to live with balance, avoiding both excess and deprivation, so that clarity and compassion can arise) are for sure important concepts that help me in my everyday life”.
Talking about balance and changes, in 2016 she was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom, just after Brexit. “It was quite difficult to do my job, because the society was so divided that it was impossible to have an open discussion on the European Union. We had to settle a great number of issues. For Latvia, it was also our biggest export market, so we had a lot of requests from companies and services, not to mention the big Latvian community in the UK and their status as EU citizens”.
Every new ambassador to the UK has to present their credence letter to the Queen or King, which means Braže had a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II. “One is not supposed to reveal what is discussed during that meeting, but I can tell you we exceeded the allotted time. She remembered visiting Latvia and meeting our first female president Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga“.
Working in London creates lots of interesting anecdotes… “One evening, at a reception at Buckingham Palace, I introduced my husband to Prince Philip, saying that he was a Dutch diplomat. ‘You’re also ambassador? You two must have many interesting pillow talks'”.
Anybody who watched the TV series The Diplomat knows that having a spouse who is also an ambassador is not always easy: “With my husband I also discuss world politics, but of course I can’t disclose to him all the information that I have. And vice versa”.
Switching from ambassador to minister was quite a change: “As an ambassador one has more freedom and as a minister one has more responsibilities. About me being outspoken, as you mentioned at the beginning, I would say that in my job I always have an objective. Sometimes talking clearly helps me reaching it. But if I need to be diplomatic, I can be diplomatic.”
Braže has been criticized for being too pro-American, especially with the current US administration: “It’s not about being pro-American, it’s about America being a strategic partner of Latvia, so it’s about being pro-Latvia. We need to consider how every decision we take influences our security and our people. The recent split between Europe and America is a big risk for the security of the whole continent and we need to fix it together, less with public statements and more with actions”.
Asked if there’s any EU decision she would change going back in time, she has no doubts: “Strengthening our defences should have happened much earlier, when Russia invaded Georgia (2008). But as Europe, we largely ignored this. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea I had people coming to me at NATO saying: ‘Oh, you Baltics were right’. And I told them: ‘How does this help us now?’ We need to act and I find it good that allies developed a new NATO military strategy'”.
We walk together back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tomass and Signe are kind enough to show me around. In the halls there are glass cases with the many gifts received by the different ministries over decades of diplomatic missions. The most valuable gift has a place of honor in a room nearby. It is the flag that waived in Washington by the Latvian Legation, a memento to the fact that the US never recognized the illegal Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, as clearly stated in the Welles declaration (1940). Throughout the 51 years that followed, all US official maps and publications mentioned the non-recognition of Soviet occupation.
