The amendments were introduced in response to a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which recommended reducing funding for Russian-language publications and broadcasting in public media. The Constitutional Court emphasized that Russian is a self-sufficient language that is actively used by commercial media, and that the Russian-speaking minority has no shortage of content.
It is proposed that Russian be used in public media only in exceptional circumstances. Furthermore, the closure of the Russian-language version of the public media portal is set to take place as early as January 1 of next year, according to the Latvian website bb.lv.
At a committee meeting, Culture Minister Nauris Puntulis justified the need for an even stricter version of the law than that recommended by the Constitutional Court as follows:
“The content still exists, and we have no grounds for continuing to publish content in Russian in an independent European nation-state. Especially in the context of war. What does ‘reduction’ mean? It must disappear entirely—that’s all,” said Puntulis, and the majority of the committee members supported him.
