Saeima's most frequent speaker revealed

Take note – story published 2 years and 1 month ago

A new Saeima – the 14th in Latvian history – will be sworn in on November 1, exactly a month after elections decided its precise composition.

That means now the final statistics are in on the work of the 13th Saeima. Over the last four years, the 100 deputies in the Saeima hall adopted a total of 150 new laws and made 1,053 amendments to existing laws. Five laws were reviewed for a second time.

During these four years, a total of 352 sessions of the Saeima have been held. Of these, taking into account the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, 21 parliamentary sessions were held partially remotely, and 185 sessions were held remotely on the e-Parliament platform. Likewise, the 13th Saeima met for eight purely ceremonial sessions.  

During the mandate of the 13th Saeima, 1,291 draft laws were submitted to parliamentary commissions for consideration, of which 951 were submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers, 185 by Saeima commissions, and 150 by Saeima deputies. The President submitted five legislative initiatives to the Saeima.

Working with the submitted draft laws - looking at them in the second and third reading - a total of 19,240 proposals were evaluated in the 13th Saeima.  

The Saeima has not finished examining 73 draft laws. According to the rules of procedure of the Saeima, the newly elected Saeima can decide on the continuation of their examination.

In debates during the 13th Saeima sittings, during these four years, deputies have spoken a total of 13,372 times. The deputies who debated most often were Viktors Valainis (1,239 times), Aldis Gobzems (977), Jūlija Stepaneņko (948), Vjačeslavs Dombrovskis (555) and Dana Reizniece-Ozola (504 times).

Interestingly, all of the aforementioned Saeima deputies were members of the opposition. Equally interestingly, of those names only Viktors Valainis has been elected to the 14th Saeima (as a representative of the Greens and Farmers Union) – so will anyone be able to match him for loquaciousness? We'll let you know in four years' time.

Seen a mistake?

Select text and press Ctrl+Enter to send a suggested correction to the editor

Select text and press Report a mistake to send a suggested correction to the editor

Related articles

More

Most important