Riga, Oct 20, LETA.
On Wednesday, before the first reading, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Saeima supported the budget for the activities of law enforcement institutions in the amount of EUR 320.7 million. Minister of Justice Jānis Bordāns (MSP) said that next year's law enforcement budget can be divided into five areas. The first area concerns the provision of a legal environment that stimulates business development and competitiveness. In this category, €87 million will be allocated to judicial policy and €11 million to commercial law policy. The main increase will concern the introduction of digital solutions in the courts and the improvement of infrastructure, with €2 million earmarked for this purpose. The aim of this policy is to ensure an efficient and reliable court system, as well as to promote a favourable and stable legal environment for commercial activities.EUR 670 000 will be allocated to the provision of leave allowance to judges in the amount of 50%. it is planned to allocate EUR 450 000 free of charge for the provision of information to sworn notaries for the performance of official activities. €61.1 million will go towards protecting children's rights. Bordāns informed that currently there are more than 42 000 maintenance debtors in Latvia, whose debts amount to EUR 444.2 million. €75 million will be allocated to criminal justice policy. Of these, 1.4 million will go towards increasing the remuneration of employees of the State Probation Service. EUR 50 000 will go towards the protection of probation workers, whose daily work is considered to be of particular risk. Next year's budget also provides €18 million for real estate policy. Of these, EUR 2.1 million will be received by the Information Centre of the State Land Service – a system for publishing data in the form of open data. 90,000 euros will go towards the forced termination of shared property between apartment owners and landowners of the apartment building. An additional €5 million will go towards constitutional law policy. €2 million will go towards a confiscation fund for criminal assets and €7.1 million to sectoral management and policy planning. Next year, the Ministry of Justice plans to implement measures for implementation of the audit of effectiveness of investigation and adjudication of economic and financial crimes carried out by the State Audit Office or recommendations of judicial audit. The MoU will also continue the implementation of measures aimed at improving the business environment – the development of registers in order to promote the development of e-services and develop cooperation between registers, as well as the improvement of the Commercial Law. The MoD also aims to move towards a single property next year, continuing the implementation of measures aimed at the arrangement of legal relations of forced shared ownership, as well as to modernise the cadastre information system. Next year it is planned to start evaluation of the operation of the Administrative Liability Law, as well as to improve the legal framework on identification of the field of activity of associations and foundations in the classification, as well as to develop the regulation of associations and foundations. Next year, the performance indicators of the Economic Affairs Court will be evaluated, as well as an assessment will be prepared on the possibilities of further expansion of its competence and the necessary preconditions.The draft state budget of the budget for 2022 and the draft laws accompanying it will still have to be considered by the Saeima.