Since the 15th of October, 2025, when Latvia introduced an electronic queue registration system for crossing the country’s external border, a total of 28,807 vehicles have crossed the border in the directions of Russia and Belarus, according to Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC).
The largest number of vehicles—13,115 trucks and passenger cars—were registered in the queue and crossed the border towards Belarus at the Pāternieki border crossing point.
The electronic queue registration system was launched last autumn as an urgent measure to address serious road safety and security risks caused by kilometre-long queues of freight vehicles lining highways in border regions. These queues had formed because trucks were forced to wait for days or even weeks for an opportunity to cross the border.
The currently used solution, lvrobeza.lv, is a temporary measure that border-crossing stakeholders rely on while LVRTC develops a full-fledged information system and user portal.
Because border crossings are now possible only at a pre-registered time slot,
there is no longer any physical or legal reason for vehicles to queue along roadside areas near the border.
Vehicles no longer congregate in the border zone but instead wait for their crossing time in specially designated parking areas or elsewhere in Latvia, without entering the immediate border area.
According to Kārlis Siliņš, Director of LVRTC’s Commercial Department, the introduction of the system has resolved a security problem that had persisted in border regions for decades.
However, it has also revealed a new trend—attempts to use technological and automated tools to disrupt safe and orderly border crossings within the established system.
Already during the rollout of the temporary solution, attempts were detected to obtain reserved time slots and resell them to other drivers in urgent need of crossing the border, potentially for financial gain. Authorities have also identified efforts to interfere with system operations by sending large volumes of automated requests, effectively occupying most available crossing slots. In addition, some online platforms have advertised services offering faster access to the queue.
“It must be understood that
the new system has fundamentally changed practices that had existed in border areas for decades,
as well as the habits of carriers and drivers. For example, it is no longer possible to swap a reserved time slot for an earlier one, even if someone offers it,” Siliņš explains.
The current situation—where various technological means are used to disrupt the system—is unsatisfactory for border services, border crossers, service providers and technology operators alike. Siliņš stresses that this is not a technical failure: the system itself works, but its operation is periodically affected by bad-faith actions, about which the competent authorities have been informed.
He adds that the temporary solution was not designed to combat fraudulent attempts to exploit urgent border-crossing needs. Its purpose is to ensure orderly registration in the queue—and that function continues to operate as intended.
Security authorities have also been informed about suspected fake registrations and well-founded concerns among specialists that these registrations may be being traded. To limit such abuses, and after identifying that many fake requests originated from foreign IP addresses, LVRTC has restricted queue reservations to IP addresses registered in Latvia.
On the 25th of November, 2025, the government approved amendments drafted by the Ministry of Transport
to the Cabinet of Ministers regulations governing the electronic queue reservation system for crossing the external land border. These amendments aim to prevent fraud by prohibiting any correction, clarification or modification of data after registration in the electronic queue system.
“Carriers would like to be able to change vehicle registration numbers and makes, but experience shows that such flexibility is often abused,” Siliņš notes.
In cooperation with the developer of the temporary solution, LVRTC has already implemented several improvements to reduce inconvenience for users acting in good faith.
At the same time, LVRTC is developing a comprehensive information system and building the necessary physical infrastructure, including optical networks and technical equipment. The future system will incorporate smart features such as automatic number plate recognition and dynamic queue planning. Plans also include user authentication and authorisation mechanisms, as well as registered user profiles.
LVRTC is Latvia’s main operator of terrestrial broadcasting networks for radio and television and also manages the state-owned shares in the mobile operator Latvijas Mobilais Telefons.
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