Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity) perhaps unsurprisingly said her government was doing well on March 2nd, as she outlined its achievements over the last year.
Siliņa presented a 73-page report on the three-party coalition’s actions to the rest of her cabinet – but it still needs to be submitted to the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, where it is likely to provoke stormy debate ahead of the next parliamentary elections in October.
“We have achieved many of the ‘4×4’ goals,” Siliņa informed her colleagues, referring to the so-called ‘4×4’ strategy she outlined a year ago.
Siliņa especially praised achievements in the field of security, including support for Ukraine. This was the government’s main priority last year. In turn, the Prime Minister named the work on the next multi-annual budget of the European Union (EU) as the most important work this year.
“The activities of the Cabinet of Ministers were based on four interrelated priorities – strengthening security and defence, supporting families with children, economic growth and reducing the bureaucratic burden. These priorities were integrated into budget planning, improving regulatory frameworks, investment, defence and foreign policy areas, and European Union policies, ensuring continuity and clear direction towards long-term goals,” said the report.
In an attempt to provide some quantitative data to accompany the general feelgood vibe, an assessment of 146 measures contained in the National Development Plan 2021-2027 and the Long-Term Development Strategy until 2030, which runs to more than 200 pages, comes up with the following figures: 37.7% of measures are heading in a very positive direction, 13.7% are fairly positive, 8.2% are stagnant, 7.5% are fairly negative, 21.3% are very negative and 11.6% don’t qualify for a rating for one reason or another.
“It can be concluded that in general more than half (51.4%) of the [National Development Plan] goals are being achieved or the progress towards their achievement is positive,” concludes the report.
A date for the government’s report to be presented to parliament has yet to be assigned but is likely to be within the next two weeks.
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