Baiba Braže at the Constitutional Legal Policy Seminar at Bīriņi: “Security and Freedom Are Inextricably Linked”

The Latvian Foreign Service also strengthens Latvia’s main priorities – security, economic development and care for people – in international courts.

For example, over the past three years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has upheld Latvia’s position in several important cases concerning the protection of the Latvian language as a constitutional value, the continuity of Latvian statehood, and Latvia’s security in the current geopolitical circumstances.

Focus should also be placed on support for Ukraine and demanding accountability from Russia for its actions, for instance, through the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. It is also worth mentioning the ECtHR judgments that unanimously found Russia responsible for its full-scale aggression against Ukraine launched in 2022, massive human rights violations in Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine, as well as the shooting down of the MH-17 flight in the east of Ukraine in 2014.

On 24 July 2025, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže delivered a speech at the 21st Bīriņi Constitutional Legal Policy Seminar organised by the Public Law Institute.

Background information

Rulings by the ECtHR of recent years, upholding Latvia’s position:

1. Valiullina and Others, Džibuti and Others, and Djeri and Others v. Latvia – on the 2018 stage of the education reform in Latvia;
2. Gaponenko v. Latvia – on the instigation of national, ethnic and racial hatred in Latvia;
3. Savickis and Others v. Latvia – on the procedures for calculating non-citizens’ pensions in Latvia;
4. Rodina and Borisova v. Latvia – on the ban on organising a demonstration and an assembly on 9 May and September 2014;
5. Ždanoka v. Latvia (No 2) – on persons active in the Communist Party of Latvia (LCP/CPSU) after 13 January 1991 being prevented from standing in parliamentary elections.
6. Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (2025) – on the Russian Federation’s (RF) full-scale aggression against Ukraine launched in 2022 and violations perpetrated as a result, as well as the downing of the MH-17 flight;
7. Ukraine v. Russia (2024) – on the mass-scale and systemic violations of human rights by the RF in Crimea and other eastern regions of Ukraine.