Conditions for initiating referendums need to be revised - Rinkevics

  • 2025-01-31
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - The conditions for initiating a national referendum need to be reviewed, President Edgars Rinkevics stressed at a meeting with chairpersons of Saeima groups at Riga Castle on Friday.

The meeting focused on work to be done by Saeima in the first half of the year, as well as the growing public distrust in state institutions, as the president's advisor Martins Dregeris informed LETA.

There is currently a lack of understanding and legitimate questions in society about the performance and effectiveness of state institutions, said Rinkevics. Multiple Saeima meetings that were not quorate, Saeima's refusal to allow the State Audit Office to audit Saeima expenses, the disproportionate share of remote working in public administration, the rejected proposal to criminalize collusion in public procurement, the slow pace of work on reducing bureaucracy, and the process of selecting a candidate for the Bank of Latvia governor are just a few examples.

According to Rinkevics, he and the heads of Saeima groups discussed the need to review the conditions for initiating a referendum in cases that would not affect the core of the Constitution and the constitutional identity.

On February 17, Rinkevics will meet again with the representatives of Saeima groups, this meeting will also be attended by constitutional law experts. Following these consultations, Rinkevics will present his next legislative initiatives.

New Unity Saeima group's head Edmunds Jurevics told LETA that, in his personal opinion, further discussion on the president's proposal was necessary. Lowering the threshold for initiating referendums could be advantageous to populists, therefore it is necessary to analyze different opinions.

The Greens/Farmers Saeima group's chairman Harijs Rokpelnis said that he disapproved of the proposal, also pointing out that various populist forces could make use of lowered threshold for initiating referendums as different signature drives were quite easy to organize.

As reported, Rinkevics will propose lowering the threshold for initiating referendums, and he plans to present this initiative in the next few months.

The politician explained that according to his idea, the lower threshold could not be used in matters concerning the core of the Constitution. There, in his opinion, the thresholds are adequate.

In order for a signature collection to be considered valid, at least 10 percent of the voting age population, or approximately 150,000 Latvian citizens over the age of 18, must sign the initiative.

Since the procedure for collecting signatures for proposing a draft law or amendments to the Constitution and for proposing recalling the Saeima was changed in 2012, not a single referendum has been held in Latvia, although several dozen legislative initiatives have been submitted to the Central Election Commission (CVK). Since then, no initiative has collected the necessary number of signatures to be submitted to the Saeima.

The last referendum was held in 2012 on constitutional amendments proposing to give Russian the status of a second state language. This initiative was rejected in the referendum.

Until then, 10,000 signatures were enough to initiate referendums in the initial phase, and some politicians considered this threshold too low. After the amendments were made, politicians, mainly from the opposition and those not in power, have criticized that the 10 percent threshold for referendums is, in turn, disproportionately high and prevents referendums from being held at all.