The aim of the study is to analyse society's attitude towards globalization, increased immigration and multicultural dialogue emphasizing the importance of multicultural education. The investigation is based on the EU Comenius school partnership project 'Richness in Diversity' (No.: 07-LVA 01-CO 06-00167-2) where five EU countries (Latvia, Slovakia, Portugal, the Netherlands and Ireland) are involved. During investigation, a qualitative research has been done. The EU Comenius school partnership project 'Richness in Diversity' coordinators (teachers experts) were interviewed to discover their own experience and attitude towards globalization, migration, intercultural dialogue as well as their observations of their students' (aged 12-15) attitude and knowledge at the beginning of the project and dynamics - how changes their attitude when they have a possibility to visit a particular country and meet its inhabitants. The results show a positive progress of the teachers' and students' knowledge about the EU Comenius school partnership project 'Richness in Diversity' involved countries. During the project, mobilities students live in host families which give them an excellent opportunity to get introduced with the particular EU country's family, their everyday life, traditions and habits. It helps them better understand people from different cultures and learn to appreciate the culture diversity.

Appropriate resources, availability of infrastructure, economic significance and food market forecasts determine the rationale for development of the dairy sector in the Baltic States. The sector is faced by significant economic problems; inter alia, production structure fragmentation, lack of investments and low labour productivity. Several sector's problems can be directly or indirectly solved by integration. Competition legal acts setting strict penalties directly and widely apply to integration processes, imposing a high level of legal risks on integrating parties. Thus, competition legislation forms a central framework limiting and guiding integration. As the subject has not been explored earlier, the author researched the Baltic dairy sector integration options at primary and secondary levels as influenced by the EU and Baltic national competition legislation and its implementation practice. Abstract-logical, monographic and interview methods have been used. The author concludes that law-compliant cross-border integration opportunities for the Baltic dairy sector exist to form larger integrated undertakings with higher market power. Reference to market shares in the competition legislation in countries with lower aggregate crude milk market sales puts the dairy sector participants at a disadvantage in case of integration processes resulting in smaller absolute size of the allowable integrated undertaking. Integration by agreements, decisions and concerted practices is appropriate for national level arrangements but is with limited applicability in the Baltic states cross-border integration at both levels of the dairy sector. In case of concentration, integration may be used to create cross-border integrated structures increasing concentration at every level of the Baltic dairy sector.

Baltic States’ dairy sectors are important to their economies. All Baltic States have had substantial current account deficits that exceeded acceptable thresholds until the year 2009. The States are dairy product exporters. Export capability largely depends on international competitive position of dairy processing companies. Several factors, inter alia, company size determine the position. Largest companies have been formed by horizontal integration. At Baltic scale dairy processing is still fragmented. The aim of this paper is to evaluate economic effect aspects of integration related to exports in the Baltic States’ dairy sector secondary level. As the subject has not been explored earlier at company level, the author researched data of 188 annual reports of 53 Baltic dairy processing companies over the period 2003 to 2009. Descriptive statistics, time series analysis and regression analysis methods were primarily used. The author establishes that among dairy companies which generate significant exports turnover two-thirds are horizontally integrated and include all largest dairy processing firms in the Baltic States. A few smaller firms have succeeded in exporting due to suitable channel management. Among a large group of companies that generate less than 1% turnover from exports, 77% are non-integrated and all are small. Using regression analysis the author estimates that 1% increase in net turnover in the exporting dairy company group is expected to create 0.93 – 0.94% increase in net turnover from exports. Policies promoting mergers of some companies may thus lead to increased dairy exports, higher milk production and fuller realisation of economic potential of the sector.

In the current context of economic instability, youths are faced with the emergence of a feeling of uncertainty with respect to their own chances of having a good debut on the labour market. The world crisis, the social reality that all societies are faced with, brought again up to the forefront the idea of young individuals’ fragility on the labour market (Balan, 2014). According to Eurostat statistical data, in the European Union young people represent one-fifth of the total population. Today the young people are facing the impacts of economical crisis and globalisation, population ageing and innovation explosion, which affects employability, education and training systems and social development. Successful youth’s integration into the labour market is one of the main factors for future development and their inclusion into society. One of the main indicators for youth’s inclusion into society is the development of a knowledge-based economy. It is important to aim at the development of a knowledge-based economy in rural regions because the majority of unemployed persons are concentrated in these regions. The Quintuple Helix Model represents the relationships between universities, firms and governments and, in this case, their influence on youth’s integration into the society and labour market in rural regions. The paper presents a brief analysis of youths’ unemployment development and their integration into the labour market in Latvia’s regions and an analysis of the factors affecting this phenomenon by using the Quintuple Helix Model.