27 October, 2015
The World Economic Forum has published Global Competitiveness Report 2015–2016, in which Latvia holds the 44th place among 140 inspected world countries. Global Competitiveness Index provides information about strengths and weaknesses of economics of Latvia, and it also includes assessment of the system of justice and rule of law.
To get familiarised with methodology of elaboration of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Council for the Judiciary listened to information provided by Arnis Sauka, the Director of the Sustainable Business Centre of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. This institution summarises data in Latvia and provides information to foreign researchers.
The Council for the Judiciary wanted to understand, how low assessment of Latvian system of justice and rule of law is elaborated in this study, being significantly different from other studies, for example, from the report on efficiency of work of courts prepared by the European Commission.
The Director of the Sustainable Business Centre explained that their task was to collect opinions of approximately 100 Latvian businessmen about questions, which are already defined, including four questions related to justice. Sauka pointed out that data acquired in such surveys may not be considered as sufficient information to adopt political decisions or other initiatives. This data should be considered as study of businessmen’s thoughts, which identifies problems businessmen are concerned of. In order to make more analytical conclusions, deeper research must be performed, explaining understanding of respondents on particular issues, for example, efficiency of rule of law. Moreover, as researcher stressed, competitiveness index is not formed by the assessment of the court system alone, it is only one of many elements. However, in global study, it must be taken into account that each country has its own traditions of understanding of values and level of demands.
The advice of the Director at the Sustainable Business Centre is to perform deeper study, clarifying particular target audiences to explain processes and development of the court system in accordance with interests of target groups.
Information prepared by
Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court
E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: 67020396, 28652211