Western governments are keeping a keen eye on the three Baltic countries' economic wobbles.
True, Latvia and Lithuania, the two other Baltic countries, swiftly followed suit, but nothing much happened for a while after that.
Policymakers in all three Baltic countries feel vindicated: during the crisis many outsiders told them to unpeg their currencies from the euro.
Ericsson supplies TeliaSonera's 4G core network in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Up north, Latvia is the Balts' weak strand, its capital, Riga, more tightly tied to Russia than those of the other two Baltic countries.
Now the course is set on further international expansion into the Baltic countries, Germany and the UK, regions with a similar downward slide in math results.
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But such is the labour shortage caused by the oil industry, that about 2, 000 processing jobs are vacant and firms are resorting to importing labour from Portugal and Baltic countries to fill them.
Indeed, many Russians who live in the Baltic countries, seeing that the Balts' slide into the Nordic economic sphere is making all who live in the area better off, now look forward to being part of the European Union.
The lack of progress has led a number of Baltic countries to consider technological interventions, or so-called "geoengineering" ideas (large-scale solutions to environmental problems), such as pumping oxygen into the water, and using chemicals to bind pollutants in sediments, in a bid to save the Baltic.
The Council of the Baltic Sea States, to which all countries on the Baltic rim belong, is to hold its second heads-of-government pow-wow next month in Riga, Latvia's capital.
Next week high-ranking politicians from those countries bordering the Baltic, including Russia, are due to attend a summit in Helsinki to discuss how to save it.
Edward Parker of Fitch says that a Baltic crash might mean that some countries have to follow the example of Portugal, which has been stuck with high costs and low growth after an unsustainable boom.
Should other countries, such as the Baltic States, eventually be allowed in as well?
Running along the bed of the Baltic Sea, it would circumvent troublesome transit countries in eastern Europe.
In other countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, it looked different: one occupation gave way to another.
But with growth across the Union's current 15 countries averaging just 1% last year, the Baltic tigers are catching up.
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The rise of English as a lingua franca will not necessarily do much to diminish arguments over national languages within or between countries, in places like the Balkans or the Baltic states.
It might make sense for the four countries with exchange rates pegged to the euro: the Baltic trio of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plus Bulgaria. (Slovenia and Slovakia have joined the euro already.) None of these will meet the Maastricht treaty's criteria for euro entry any time soon.
This trend will accelerate in 2012, as politicians between the Baltic and the Black Sea ask why they should accept outside advice and instructions from countries that signally fail to practise what they preach.
Professor Daniel Conley from Lund University in Sweden, says they are "dangerous quick-fixes, " which could have a number of "unforeseen" consequences and allow countries to ignore their obligations for reducing the waste they dump in the Baltic.
It has been closely involved with preparations for membership by the five most developed Eastern European countries - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia - and the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who are all expected to join the EU in 2004.
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