Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics plans to propose lowering the threshold for holding public referendums on legislative changes, LSM reports. Rinkevics discussed the issue with Prime Minister Evika Silina and leaders of parliamentary groups, LETA reported. He will invite constitutional experts to join the discussions. Edmunds Jurevics, leader of New Unity’s parliamentary group, and Harijs Rokpelnis, leader of the parliamentary group of the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS), warned that lowering the threshold could encourage populism. Currently, initiating a referendum requires signatures from 10% of the total electorate or around 150,000 citizens. There have been no public referendums in Latvia since 2012. Before that, petitions to initiate referendums only needed 10,000 signatures.
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