Legal provisions for direct democracy at the local level

https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1844425&Site=COE

J?ri Ruus (2011)”Democratic participation at the local level…inpost-communist states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania in Theo Schiller (ed.) bookLocal Direct Democracy in Europe, VS Verlag, pp.272-275

Transnational Democracy in the making. IRI  Europe handbook,2004,(Bruno Kaufmann,AlainLamasoure,J?rgen Meyer,eds.) Amsterdam, pp.174-179

On 17 June 2008 the Parliament (Saeima) adopted an amendment to the Local Government Act, which would grant local authorities the right to organize local referendums, following the adoption of a special law that had to be submitted until December 2009 to the Saeima. Such a draft law has never been submitted and it means that there are no local referendums in Latvia.

There exists no special institution of popular initiative at local level in Latvia but this form of participation is possible in practice. It is up to local councillors to decide whether to react and how to react to any such popular initiative. Popular initiative has been used by citizens on a number of occasions in the past. A relatively recent and well-known case is related to the administrative territorial reform. In spring 2010 a number of inhabitants of Rojas novads municipality (formed by amalgamation of 2 municipalities) organized a meeting and gathered a significant number of signatures asking to split this newly formed municipality into the two pre-reform municipalities. The municipal council decided to support this initiative and the responsible ministry prepared a draft law proposing the split of the newly formed municipality and submitted it to the Parliament.

Local authorities can organise boards, commissions and working groups, that consist from local councillors and local inhabitants. There exists a practice of having standing (permanent) commissions and consultative councils of local citizens in local authorities and this practice is becoming more popular. Working groups, also citizens’ panels, focus groups are organised for finding solutions to particular tasks or for discussion of particular issues.

Local Government Act the procedure of holding general public hearings is described.