A predictable and effective justice system is essential to investment protection and business confidence. As Latvia expands the jurisdiction of the Court of Economic Affairs (CEA), it must ensure that additional responsibilities are matched by adequate judicial capacity, specialised expertise throughout the judicial process and transparent performance monitoring. FICIL calls for an evidence-based approach to strengthening the court to ensure that its expanding role supports timely, high-quality and predictable decisions, reinforcing Latvia’s business environment.
The European Commission’s 2026 Latvia Country Report offers a useful starting point.[1] It notes that business representatives value the CEA’s specialisation and the quality of its judgments. This is an important strength to preserve. A specialised court can build the knowledge needed to handle complex commercial and financial matters and, over time, support more consistent and predictable adjudication. The policy challenge is to ensure that the institution has the capacity and wider judicial support needed to sustain those benefits as its responsibilities evolve.
Changes to the CEA’s jurisdiction make this question particularly relevant. The proposed amendments to the Civil Procedure Law[2] would expand the court’s civil jurisdiction to include seven additional categories of disputes: claims concerning the acquisition of company shares, liability for losses caused to a company by its management and other specified persons, termination of a company’s activities, commercial insurance indemnities, shareholders’ and participants’ rights to information, financial instruments, and collective consumer claims. The aim is to concentrate expertise in complex commercial matters, improve consistency in judicial decisions and make better use of the CEA’s specialised knowledge. The proposed phased implementation provides an opportunity to address capacity needs as the court assumes new responsibilities. However, these benefits will depend on whether the additional caseload can be managed without creating delays or compromising decision quality.
The legislative annotation recognises the need to strengthen the CEA’s judicial capacity as its jurisdiction expands. In March 2025, the Council for the Judiciary decided to increase the number of judicial positions by two. However, additional positions alone will not guarantee shorter proceedings or better outcomes. FICIL calls for ongoing assessment of judicial workload, case complexity and processing times, with further staffing and organisational measures introduced where evidence indicates capacity constraints. Performance should be assessed not only by the number of cases resolved, but also by the age of pending cases, the duration of proceedings by case type, and the quality and consistency of decisions.
Specialisation also needs to be considered across the judicial process, not only at first instance. The European Commission’s report points to concerns among stakeholders that appeals from CEA decisions are heard without an equivalent level of specialised economic and commercial expertise. A strong first-instance court is important, but businesses also need confidence that its decisions will be reviewed by judges equipped to assess the legal and commercial issues involved. FICIL encourages the responsible institutions to strengthen specialised expertise at the appeal stage to support consistency and predictability across the system.
These issues matter for investment protection in a broader sense. The 2026 Country Report indicates that 43% of companies in Latvia were fairly or very confident that the law and courts protect their investments, compared with 37% in 2025. This is a wider measure of business confidence, not an assessment of the CEA alone. Nevertheless, it underlines why the practical functioning of the justice system remains relevant to Latvia’s investment climate: confidence depends not only on legal rules on paper, but also on whether they can be applied and enforced effectively.
FICIL considers the specialised CEA an important part of Latvia’s investment-protection framework. “The priority should be to preserve the court’s strengths while ensuring that its responsibilities are matched by adequate resources, specialised expertise and transparent performance monitoring. Any expansion of jurisdiction should be supported by evidence-based capacity planning, with regular monitoring of caseloads, processing times and pending cases. This would help identify emerging bottlenecks early and ensure that additional responsibilities translate into more effective dispute resolution”, says Māris Vainovskis, the Leader of FICIL Investment Protection Work Group.
The objective is not simply to process more cases, but to deliver timely, high-quality and predictable decisions in complex economic matters. As the CEA takes on new responsibilities, Latvia should ensure that its capacity grows accordingly and that specialised expertise is available throughout the judicial process. This is essential to effective investment protection, legal certainty and a business environment in which companies can make long-term decisions with confidence.
Source:
[1] European Commission, 2026 Latvia Country Report: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/cb87d151-e0ef-4111-b772-84bc679c55c9_en?filename=Country%20report%20-%20Latvia%20-%20EN.pdf
[2] Saeima of the Republic of Latvia, Draft Law “Amendments to the Civil Procedure Law” (Likumprojekts “Grozījumi Civilprocesa likumā”), legislative file and accompanying annotation: https://titania.saeima.lv/LIVS14/saeimalivs14.nsf/0/A9FC450E31C4FB51C2258CCA004CE0FE?OpenDocument.