For the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Saeima, the winter session’s central event was the annual foreign policy debate held in the Saeima. The Committee also devoted a lot of time to preparing the draft law on the ratification of the Revised European Social Charter. This was emphasised by Ojārs Kalniņš, Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee, when evaluating the Committee’s work during the winter session.    

Cooperation in research requires strategic agreement on priority research areas to be developed in each of the Baltic States. That was the shared opinion of the Baltic Assembly delegates and representatives of research and innovation on Friday, 22 March, when during a parliamentary seminar held by the Education, Science and Culture Committee of the Baltic Assembly they discussed strengthening cooperation among the Baltic States in research and innovation as part of the BIRTI (Baltic Innovative Research and Technology Infrastructure) project.

On the day when the restored state of Latvia has become a day older then the first independent state of Latvia, Solvita Āboltiņa, Speaker of the Saeima, addressed the parliament from the rostrum of the Saeima and urged everybody to think about the basis for the existence of our state and to take responsibility for a free and independent Latvia in the future.

On Thursday, 14 March, the Saeima appointed Jānis Maizītis as Director of the Constitution Protection Bureau (CPB).

On Thursday, 14 March, the Saeima adopted amendments to the Criminal Law and the Criminal Procedure Law in order to improve the provisions on applying coercive measures to legal entities. The draft laws containing amendments proposed by the Legal Affairs Committee of the Saeima were deemed urgent and adopted in the plenary in two readings.

On Wednesday, 13 March, Solvita Āboltiņa, Speaker of the Saeima, met with Jean Asselborn, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg, and thanked him for Luxembourg’s support regarding Latvia’s membership in the OECD.

“With the approach of Latvia’s first presidency of the Council of the European Union, we are interested in developing closer cooperation with Luxembourg, which together with Italy and Latvia will make up the presidency trio,” pointed out Solvita Āboltiņa, Speaker of the Saeima, on Tuesday, 12 March, during her official visit to Luxembourg as she met with Laurent Mosar, Speaker of the parliament of Luxembourg.

On Thursday, 7 March, the Saeima in the second and final reading adopted amendments to the Law on Enterprise Income Tax, thereby improving the legal framework for preventing bribery.

On Thursday, 7 March, the Saeima supported the draft resolution on participation of the Latvian National Armed Forces in the European Union’s training mission in Mali (EUTM Mali) aimed at training the Malian Armed Forces.