Latvian Parliament Adopts Amendments On Minority Languages, Restricting Use Of Russian

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) According to Ukrinform, the Latvian public broadcaster LSM reported this in an article.

The Saeima of Latvia adopted the decision on Thursday, October 1. Fifty-five MPs voted in favor and 24 against.

Previously, public-service media were required to produce programs in the languages of national minorities. Following a ruling by Latvia's Constitutional Court on March 30, 2026, this framework had to be changed. The court ruled that content produced by the public broadcaster LSM should primarily be in Latvian.

According to the court, Russian is a self-sufficient minority language in Latvia, meaning the state is not required to provide additional support for it. At the same time, the court emphasized that support should be provided for minority languages that are not considered self-sufficient.

The court defines a self-sufficient minority language as one spoken by a significant proportion of the country's population and supported by a stable social structure, cultural organizations and media outlets. The court noted that Russian continues to be widely used in Latvia and that commercial broadcasters produce content in Russian.

According to the court, the previous obligation imposed on public-service media had contributed to the creation of a "parallel information space" and weakened the status of Latvian as the country's sole official language.

Read also: Lithuania protests to Russia over sabotage in Estonia and attacks on Ukraine

This summer, following a change of government, the Saeima began implementing the court's ruling, resulting in the amendments to the law.

Under the new rules, content in languages classified as self-sufficient, including Russian, may be produced in only three circumstances:

• in an emergency;
• in a state of emergency;
• when it is necessary to specifically refute only such information that is misleading, untrue and poses a threat to democracy and the Latvian state as a whole.

In the third case, the law requires public-service media, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, to take into account the intensity and nature of the threat to national security.

As Ukrinform reported, the Lithuanian parliament authorized the government to establish, from 2028, a Lithuanian-language proficiency requirement for taxi and ride-sharing service drivers.

Photo: Mareks Steins / Unsplash

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