The Saeima passed in the final reading amendments to the Law on Public Electronic Mass Media and Administration Thereof. These amendments are aimed to merge Latvian Television and Latvijas Radio in 2025.
The law states that the Public Electronic Mass Media Council (SEPLP) has until the 31st of December 2024 to perform the necessary actions in order to reorganise and merge Latvijas Radio and LTV to found a new state enterprise Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs LLC. Registration of the new enterprise in the Enterprises Register is planned for the 2nd of January 2025.
Latvijas Radio and LTV will be excluded from the register.
The merge of the two public media has been a topic for discussions for decades in Latvia. However, politicians, LTV and Latvijas Radio were not able to reach a compromise until now. Radio station workers were the ones who voiced the biggest objections and scepticism about the merge and the financial gain from it.
The annotation to the law prepared by SEPLP mentions that until the merger in 2024, as well as during 2025, it is necessary to carry out a number of activities for the implementation of the reorganization process, which requires EUR 384 437 (EUR 301 412 in 2024, and EUR 83 025 in 2025).
Funding for 2024 and 2025 was previously approved in the Law on State Budget for 2024 and Budget Content for 2024, 2025 and 2026.
The topic of funding was a topic of many discussions in the context of the merge of the two media. Representatives of both media and SEPLP previously mentioned that the creation of a single public media will also require increased funding. However, so far politicians have not been too accepting of this idea.
SEPLP and multiple politicians supporting the merge claim that Latvia needs the creation of a single public media to strengthen its content and financial capacity, which is especially important to national security at the moment.
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