On November 9, the Latvian Saeima adopted in its final reading a package of amendments to eight laws related to a 2020 Constitutional Court ruling, which underlined the state’s obligation to protect same-sex families. The changes establish the institution of civil partnerships in Latvia. The amendments are expected to enter into force on July 1, 2024. For each amendment between 55-60 MPs of the 100-member body voted in favor, while 35-40 were opposed.
The adopted legislation allows:
- Notaries to register partnerships;
- partners to have the right to decide on their spouse’s medical treatment;
- partners to be exempted from conflict of interest regulations;
- partners to enjoy tax benefits similar to married couples;
- partners to have social security rights, to receive a share of the deceased partner’s pension.
The changes to the law provide that a partnership may be entered into by two adults, including same-sex partners, appearing in person before a notary and stating that they have a close personal relationship, a common household, and an intention to care for, look after, and support each other.
There have been eight attempts to resolve the status of unmarried couples in the last 20 years, but none succeeded. This summer, the newly-formed government of Prime Minister Evika Siliņa committed itself to adopting regulations on partnership for unmarried couples by the end of the year.
However, the Life Partners Movement has previously argued that regulating partnerships would not address every problem, such as property relations or rights related to children. Kaspars Zālītis, head of the movement, has said that same-sex couples would continue to litigate for changes due to these shortcomings.
Although the amendments to the law state that a partnership is not equivalent to marriage, opposition MPs repeatedly called the regulation a surrogate, “marriage plagiarism”, a “marriage reproduction”, a “marriage clone”, and an attempt to circumvent the constitutional provision that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, as well as a first step towards allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.
The opposition plans to call for the law to be halted before it can enter into force, so that it can attempt to collect signatures to hold a referendum. Halting the law requires the vote of 34 MPs, while holding a referendum requires the signatures of one tenth of the electorate to be collected within two months. If a referendum is held, the law can be repealed if at least half of the voters who took part in the last parliamentary elections take part, and a majority votes in favor of repeal. In the 14th Saeima elections, 916,368 voters took part, so half the number is 458,184.
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