President of Latvia insists on more inclusive ‘downtime benefit’ system

Benefits to temporarily suspended employees and problems experienced by people in accessing these benefits were the main topic of today’s video call between the President of Latvia Egils Levits and Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš. Although funding for these benefits has been allocated, payouts have been slow, and there is a considerable share of population denied access to crisis support.

President insists that ‘procedures for determination of eligibility for ‘downtime benefit’ need to be changed – they must be more inclusive. Moreover, crisis has also revealed some of the weaknesses of existing tax system, like option to pay the lowest possible tax rate, which has now created an enormous pressure on those who were paying the full tax rate.’ According to Egils Levits, emergency has unearthed tax system problems that need to be solved to make the system better in the long run.

President and Prime Minister also discussed Egils Levits’ initiative to modernise the Section 81 of Satversme to make it more relevant to current democratic system of Latvia. President Levits informed Premier Kariņš that he will be reaching out to the chairs of Saeima political groups to discuss the proposal and present his opinion in early May.

Other topics of virtual meeting included multi-annual financial framework of the European Union (EU). European Commission is currently working on EU’s budget proposal, which will be presented to the heads of states and governments at the next week’s summit. President and Prime Minister talked about the current position of Latvia and coordination with other EU member states.