On April 6, the Civic Alliance-Latvia sent a letter to the Cabinet of Ministers and the Saeima with a call to find supportive solutions for civil society organisations (CSO) to reduce the negative consequences of the Covid-19 crisis.
The Covid-19 coronavirus disease and the resulting emergency situation in Latvia also have a negative impact on the organised civil society sector (civil society organisations), therefore the Civic Alliance-Latvia (CAL) calls on the responsible officials to decide on support measures for Covid-19 crisis victims, employers and taxpayers, to introduce support measures that also address the specific problems of civil society organisations.
The CAL provides proposals for solutions aimed at creating the necessary preconditions to primarily prevent or reduce job losses or forced downtime in the current situation, the liquidation of organisations as a result of Covid-19 consequences, and to reduce the pressure on the social budget.
In order to improve the current situation, the CAL calls on the government, the Saeima and the relevant Ministries to make the following amendments to the law:

* Expand the circle of recipients of downtime allowances by making changes in the Cabinet of Ministers Regulations No. 165;
* Associations and foundations that are also employers and are affected by the crisis, cannot employ employees or having downtime should be reimbursed based on the calculation of the average employee's earnings, which is up to 75% of the average earnings for the last 12 months , but not more than 700 Euro for a calendar month;
* Merchants, associations and foundations in the sectors affected by the crisis are exempted from the rent of municipal or state-owned premises or receive a reduction of the rent without interest on arrears and in the event of late payment of the contractual penalty;
* Determine the right to apply for an extension of the tax payment deadline, as well as to request the granting of an extension of the tax payment deadline for those overdue tax payments, the payment deadline of which has been extended in accordance with Article 24 of the Law on Taxes and Duties, if the delay is due to Covid-19, for employers and taxpayers who submit a substantiated application to the tax administration;
* During the emergency situation declared due to Covid-19, the state and local governments are entitled to make payments to associations and foundations with which a project financing, co-operation and delegation agreement has been concluded for the provision of services and other activities, if it was not possible to provide or implement them due to the emergency situation.

We call on Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, the Head of the Steering Group for Business and Employee Support established by the Prime Minister, Minister of Finance Jānis Reirs, as well as the Saeima to decide on support measures for civil society organisations, taking into account their specific activities. You can read more about the content of the letter here. The annex to the letter can be found here.