Latvia’s non-governmental sector could soon face significant changes as the government seeks to determine which organisations provide genuine value to society and which primarily rely on public funding.
According to figures circulating on social media, budget lines across government ministries classified as “NGOs and individuals” totalled around 200 million euros last year.
BNN asked political scientist Filips Rajevskis, co-owner of media company Mediju tilts, whether the state should continue financing NGO projects on such a scale.
“The question is whether we really need to spend this amount of money and which non-governmental organisations should receive it,” Rajevskis said.
“We have volunteer firefighters, patient organisations, associations supporting pensioners and people with disabilities – these are genuinely important.
And then we have what I would call ‘parasite organisations’ that, for example, teach the Russian language to migrants from Pakistan. That is something taxpayers certainly should not have to finance.”
Rajevskis agreed that many organisations played a valuable role after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by helping Ukrainian refugees learn Latvian. However, he argued that such organisations should not be grouped together with NGOs that could operate independently without public funding.
“Why should taxpayers maintain them? According to publicly available information, up to 1.24% of the state budget goes to the NGO sector. I may be slightly off, and if so, someone can correct me, but we are talking about enormous sums at a time when the government is preparing budget cuts. We constantly hear there is not enough money for oncology patients, medicines, demographic support and many other priorities, yet somehow funding for these organisations is never in short supply. Even if the amount is not hundreds of millions but only tens of millions, we are still talking about a very significant figure.”
Asked how wasteful spending could be prevented, Rajevskis said
the only effective solution would be zero-based budgeting, under which all spending would be reassessed from scratch every year.
“The fact that these inherited baseline expenditures are simply carried over from one budget to the next is completely unacceptable, particularly in cases like this. I understand why pensions are treated as baseline expenditure – pensions must be paid. But there are areas that should be reassessed annually to determine whether they are still necessary.”
He argued that some NGOs have effectively become state institutions because almost all of their funding comes from the government.
“When an organisation’s only source of income is the state budget, it is no longer really a non-governmental organisation. We’ve gone off track somewhere. I support helping the NGO sector, but it should not be transformed into an extension of the state.”
Rajevskis noted that in many countries NGOs actively raise money from private donors,
with government support serving only as a supplement.
“If society contributes one euro, perhaps the state can match it with another euro. But it cannot be the other way around, where the state provides 99 euros and private donors contribute just one euro—or nothing at all. That simply isn’t acceptable. The entire system needs to change because Latvia is heading into a very difficult budget period, and we cannot afford to waste public money.”
Asked how public money reaches NGOs, Rajevskis said funding is channelled through ministries and various government programmes.
He referred to a recent decision by Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava to terminate cooperation memorandums signed by previous ministers with two organisations.
“The Ministry of the Interior has also been allocating funding to migrant support organisations. On the one hand, we say we are fighting illegal migration; on the other, we spend taxpayers’ money to improve the well-being of migrants whom we supposedly do not want to come here. That simply should not happen.”
Asked about public events such as the recently held Lampa Conversation Festival,
Rajevskis said discussion festivals and similar events have their place but should not be financed from the state budget.
He expressed a similar view regarding satirical political shows such as Politicians’ Roast. “I don’t watch it anymore. I saw it several years ago and found it so inappropriate that I lost interest. I don’t think it’s particularly ethical or useful, although that’s a matter of personal taste. Every type of entertainment has its audience.”
“If people enjoy it, if politicians agree to take part and comedians want to perform, they should simply sell tickets. We are a free country, and anyone can organise such events. But taxpayers should not be expected to pay for every entertainment project.”
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