In his speech, the President of Latvia underlined that good governance is indispensable to modern democracies governed by the rule of law. He also pointed out that compared to the rest of Europe, Latvia has made substantial progress in terms of exploring and integrating the concept of good governance into its legal framework, as well as practical implementation.
According to President Levits, good governance has two dimensions. One of the dimensions is connected to the way government works and the other one determines how public administration interacts with population. Egils Levits also added that the good governance is held by four ‘elephants’: political leadership or government that vocalizes the interests of society, civil service with specific responsibilities, institutional framework and hierarchy of public administration, adequate decision-making procedures.
‘Public awareness is the prerequisite for efficient application of good governance. First, people must start by demanding good governance and, secondly, they must also be aware of what it implies. It is necessary to actively engage citizens in political debate on fair distribution of limited resources available to the state. That is how civic society functions. People must constantly think about how to run our state. However, public debate must also be constructive. In other words, we should avoid useless generalisations and populistic statements that discredit our state and government. Government deserves to be treated with respect,’ stressed Egils Levits.
President also indicated that efficient, professional and in the context of Public Administration Structure Law autonomous public administration scrutiny and improvement system must be integrated in our institutional framework to ensure that we are not dependent on campaign-type reform efforts. ‘That goes against the principle of good governance. From an organisational perspective, public administration must be constantly reformed, it must be constantly adapted to ever-changing environment. From a social perspective, we go through constant changes and our priorities change or new priorities come about, while other priorities become less relevant or not relevant at all. Public administration must constantly adapt to these changing priorities. Similar to many other countries of the world, Latvia must also create a framework for constant monitoring and adjustment of organisational practices, structure, sections and other aspects of public administration,’ said Egils Levits.
During the meeting with the Director General of the SRS Ieva Jaunzeme, President and Director General discussed the current priorities of the SRS, short-term challenges and SRS development vision.
Ieva Jaunzeme stressed the need to make changes in several legal acts to promote voluntary tax payments and urged to pay specific attention to the issue of disclosure of SRS decisions that has been initiated by the SRS itself. ‘Tax collection and the overall well-being of our country will improve through comprehensive participation, if we will increase the number of taxpayers in voluntary tax payment scheme,’ explained Director General.
Egils Levits welcomed the initiative of SRS to disclose its decisions, which would also be in line with open government initiative. President also underlined that disclosure of SRS decisions would preventive effect on the whole society, including employers and employees.
In conclusion, President Levits praised the work done by SRS so far. SRS has actively worked on promoting honest business practices and combating of shadow economy. President also encouraged SRS to focus more on raising of public awareness, consulting, and apply penalties only when all other means have been exhausted.
