Commission Report (2002): Latvia

1.3. General evaluation

In its 1997 Opinion, the Commission concluded that Latvia fulfilled the political criteria. Since that time, the country has made considerable progress in further consolidating and deepening the stability of its institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities. This has been confirmed over the past year. Latvia continues to fulfil the Copenhagen political criteria.

Regarding public administration reform, Latvia has continued to address the remaining reform issues and the legislative and administrative framework will be fairly comprehensive once the Civil Service Law and Public Administration Law are fully implemented. It is now important to speed up the introduction of the uniform civil service pay system and to ensure sufficient funding.

Overall, while most of the deficiencies of the judicial system have been identified, only part of them have been addressed. Efforts in this field need to be multiplied in order to ensure a thorough systemic reform, based on political support for modernising the judiciary and sufficient funding. The legislative framework still remains to be completed and the increasing backlog of court cases should be reduced. The issue of pre-trial detention requires continued attention. Further significant efforts to strengthen the de facto independence, efficiency and quality of the judiciary are needed. The upgrading of the infrastructure of courts needs to be completed.

Latvia has made further progress in the fight against corruption, which remains a cause for serious concern. The legislative framework has been improved, the institutional set-up has been strengthened and public awareness as well as the involvement of civil society are rising. However, further efforts are needed in order to complete the institutional set-up and to provide the new anti-Corruption Bureau with the necessary means in order to achieve concrete results.

Latvia continues to respect human rights and freedoms.

Latvia has encouraged the further integration of non-citizens into Latvian society by removing language requirements in the election law, and increasing support to facilitate the naturalisation process, and through the activities of the Society Integration Foundation. The integration process needs however to be accelerated and sufficient funding made available to encourage naturalisation and language training in particular. Latvia should ensure that at all levels the implementation of the language law respects the principles of justified public interest and proportionality, Latvia`s international obligations and the Europe Agreement.

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