Monthly Updates
October 2022
The centre-right New Unity (JV) party of the incumbent Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš won 19 per cent of the vote in Latvia’s parliamentary elections on 1 October. Seven parties passed the five per cent threshold required to be represented in Parliament. The populist Stability party has replaced Harmony Social Democracy (SSD) as the largest Russophone party in Parliament. SSD had formerly been Latvia’s biggest opposition party but has lost support since publicly condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine. Overall voter turnout rose to 59 per cent - an increase of five percentage points compared to the 2018 elections. However, there was low turnout among the Latvian diaspora (only 16 per cent), partly as a result of recent amendments to election laws introducing additional requirements for opening election sites. For example, as a result of the new requirements, only nine sites were opened across the United Kingdom, where more than 130,000 Latvian citizens are registered to vote, compared to 19 during the 2018 elections.
August 2022
Latvia extended the State of Emergency on the border with Belarus for the fourth time since it first came into effect one year ago with the announced intention of deterring illegal border crossings. The State of Emergency was criticized by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights for obstructing transparency and accountability for measures affecting migrants and refugees taken at the border and restricting the work of human rights organizations.
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