At the beginning of their meeting, Romans Alijevs shared that the work of the Council under his leadership so far was focused on high-quality youth involvement in discussions about integration policies. The President of Latvia highly appreciated the work of the Council so that sense of disconnection from the state would not occur in young people from ethnic minorities. Romans Alijevs added that the Council as a consulting body always tried to alleviate various contradictions and generated a number of positive examples and successful solutions for different groups of the public. He stressed that the Council consisted of representatives from a very wide range of different minorities, which enabled also working on solving the issues of great importance for integration with assistance of the Council members as corresponding opinion leaders.
The officials discussed further work of the Council, membership, and potential improvements therein, by indicating that balancing the experience in that field and a new vision was desirable by complementing the membership of the Council. Having invited Romans Alijevs to continue chairing the Council in the future as well, the President of Latvia pointed to the directions, where he considered increase in intensity of the Council’s work, with particular emphasis being made on consolidation of the community by means of opinion leaders of different nationalities. Raimonds Vējonis said that uniting the public could be promoted very successfully by outstanding and respected opinion leaders, expressing their position concerning public concerns. He also stressed the role of the Council in arranging the information space and called for active offering of their proposals. Raimonds Vējonis also called for the Council to focus on issues that had not been on the agenda before and he stated that the best solutions could be reached by means of specific and precise proposals. “I am eager for the Council to work actively in addressing the issues being of great importance for Latvia as a country comprised of different nationalities,” he said. He invited the Council to be also one of the organizers of events for the Centenary of Latvia, by mentioning that those celebrations should show inter alia that Latvia was home for all people, who lived here and loved this country.
During the conversation, the President of Latvia called for non-citizens and stateless persons residing in Latvia to enjoy their rights according to the Law on Citizenship to register Latvian citizenship without having to pass examinations only up to October 1, 2015. “First of all, Latvia means its people. The people, who are studying, living, working, and bringing up their children here. I encourage everyone, who has not yet managed to register citizenship according to the law, to do so and to join the family of people, who call Latvia to be their home, who are participatory in strengthening and developing our country,” said Raimonds Vējonis. The right to register citizenship without having to pass examinations is enjoyed by non-citizens and stateless persons permanently residing in Latvia, who have registered themselves in accordance with the law and have mastered the full curriculum at comprehensive schools with Latvian as a language of instruction or Latvian flow at bilingual comprehensive schools by obtaining primary or general secondary education at those schools in the period up to 1 October 2013. Citizenship can be registered by applying to the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs. Romans Alijevs also invited the nationals, who had such an opportunity, to use it, and he undertook to promote that issue with the help of various minority associations.
Both collocutors also discussed cooperation of the Council with various ministries, particularly the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Science. Romans Alijevs highlighted the importance of bilingual teaching practice in schools that expanded horizons of young people and skills to learn new things. He highlighted translations of textbooks from foreign languages for learning various subjects in schools instead of using the textbooks written in Latvian as a problem there. Results of the examination are a clear sign that this approach is counterproductive, thus the Council will also continue popularizing organization of such teaching work.
