On 5 September at Riga Castle President of Latvia Egils Levits hosted a conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the 17 September 2012 opinion issued by the Constitutional Rights Committee of the President of Latvia “On the Constitutional Foundations of the State of Latvia and the Inviolable Core of the Satversme”.
The Constitutional Rights Committee established by the President of Latvia was then chaired by Egils Levits, and during its existence the Committee prepared opinions on various issues upon the request of various state institutions or upon its own initiative.
As President Levits pointed out during the discussion, the opinion “On the Constitutional Foundations of the State of Latvia and the Inviolable Core of the Satversme” was compiled upon the initiative of the Committee itself in relation to the referendum on a second official language, which took place in 2012: “It was a certain shock to my colleagues and I – not the referendum itself, but the intellectual helplessness in understanding the meaning of the state of Latvia and the foundations for its existence. There was a lack of awareness about what the state of Latvia is, what its essence is, what the foundations of the state of Latvia are.” “We drafted a manual of sorts not only for justices, civil servants and politicians, but also citizens,” President Levits continued.
The proposals included in this opinion provided an invaluable contribution in strengthening the constitutional foundations of the state of Latvia and drafting the extended preamble of the Satversme, which reflects the essence of the core of the constitution and places upon the implementers of the Satversme the responsibility to protect the constitutional identity of the state of Latvia. “Our self-determination rights and desire for our own state are immutable,” President Levits emphasised.
In gratitude for their personal and significant contribution to the development of the state rights of Latvia, President of Latvia Egils Levits presented the Presidential Medal to the former members of the Constitutional Rights Committee of the President of Latvia: Ineta Ziemele, Gunārs Kusiņš, Daiga Rezevska, Mārtiņš Mits, Lauris Liepa, as well as advisers to the President of Latvia Inese Lībiņa-Egnere, Sandra Sondore and Edgars Pastars.
