The OECD wishes to express its sincere gratitude for the generous financial and in-kind support of the Court Administration of the Republic of Latvia.
This report is part of the OECD work on Equal Access to Justice of the OECD Public Governance Directorate, under the direction of Marcos Bonturi. The work and report were led by Tatyana Teplova, Head of Unit, Governance for Gender and Inclusiveness, OECD Public Governance Directorate, under the guidance of Martin Forst, Head of Division, Governance Reviews and Partnerships, Daniel Trnka, Senior Policy Analyst and Nick Malyshev, Head of Division, Regulatory Policy Division. Principal authors of the report are Chloe Lelievre and Martyna Wanat, Policy Analysts, OECD Public Governance Directorate, Felix Steffek, University Lecturer, Faculty of Law; LLM Deputy Director; Deputy Director of the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law; Director of Studies, Newnham College, University of Cambridge; Lorenzo Allio and Delia Rodrigo, Regulatory Reform Experts and Directors, allio|rodrigoconsulting.
Critical input was provided by Daniel Blume, OECD Directorate for Financial and Corporate Affairs.
The report was peer-reviewed and benefitted from further inputs provided by Tambet Artma, Head of Business Register Division and Kätlin Kattai, Head of Client and International Relations, Centre of Registers and Information Systems -RIK (Estonia); Bettina Meincke, Judge, Higher Regional Court of Cologne (Germany) and Farhaz Khan, Barrister, Outer Temple Chambers (United Kingdom).
The report also benefited from contributions by David Fauquié, lawyer, Barcelona (Spain).
A special appreciation is due to the governmental stakeholders including Deputy State Secretary of Justice Laila Medina, Edvīns Balševics, Anna Skrjabina and Lauma Legzdiņa from Court Administration, Baiba Lielkalne from the Ministry of Justice, Guna Paidere from the Enterprise Registry, the State Land Service, Land Registry offices, the Patent Office, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development.
This report is the result of contributions from many businesses and other stakeholders who participated in the survey and interviews. The overall survey on access to business justice services was disseminated by the Court Administration and promoted through various governmental and business websites, including the Ministry of Economic, Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), Enterprise Register, Patent Office; Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia, Association of Latvian Commercial Banks, the Foreign Investors Council in Latvia (FICIL), the Latvian Start-up Association, Latvian Information and communications technology association (LIKTA), Certified Mediators Council and others. Interviews with business stakeholders during two fact-finding missions (July and October 2017), information received from Latvia and desk research also contributed to the findings of this report.
Sincere thanks are due to Jean-Jacques Hible, Paul Frissard, Dana Ghandour and Margaux Mery for their background research and inputs.
Editorial assistance was provided by Roxana Glavanov, Amelia Godber, Julie Harris and Andrew Esson. Administrative assistance was provided by Benjamin Jouannes and Charlotte Dubald.