The opposition National Alliance (NA) has proposed that the Saeima express no confidence in Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity), citing the allocation of state funding for Russian-language content produced by Latvia’s public media.
NA refers to the 2023 National Security Concept, which recommends that, from the 1st of January, 2026, content produced by public media should be only in Latvian and in languages belonging to the European cultural space. The aim, according to the concept, is to promote all residents’ sense of belonging to a unified information space based on the Latvian language and other European Union, European Economic Area, and EU candidate-country languages. By ending state funding for content in Russian, the process of creating a unified information space would be completed, while Russian-language content in commercial media would continue to exist using private funding.
In NA’s view, the Cabinet of Ministers continues to allocate funding to public media for content in Russian, which contradicts the goal of fostering a unified information space for all residents of Latvia.
“We believe that the content in minority languages referred to in the Law on Public Electronic Mass Media and Their Governance does not have to be produced only in Russian, and that these legal provisions do not contradict what is set out in the National Security Concept,” NA states.
The draft decision prepared by the opposition has been included on the agenda of the Saeima’s next session,
scheduled for Thursday, the 15th of January.
Latvia’s government consists of Prime Minister Siliņa and 14 ministers from the parties Progresīvie, New Unity, and the Green and Farmers’ Union (ZZS).
As previously reported, opposition parties in the Saeima demanded Siliņa’s resignation four times last year, but she survived all parliamentary confidence votes. The most recent confidence vote took place in October last year, when 46 deputies voted against her dismissal, 38 voted in favor, and one deputy—Uldis Augulis (ZZS)—abstained. Another deputy, Andrejs Ceļapīters, who at the time was not affiliated with any parliamentary faction but has since joined the ZZS faction, did not take part in the vote at all.
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