Latvia’s Saeima (parliament) passed a new Immigration Law (Imigrācijas likums) on June 11 by 65 votes to 17, replacing the statute that has governed foreign residence since 2002.
Eight days later, President Edgars Rinkēvičs declined to promulgate it, returning the law for a second review over the provisions that decide who may buy residence through investment.
The law is not yet in force. Promulgation is on hold while the chamber reconsiders, and because the spring session closed on June 18, any second vote falls to the autumn.
Stripped to its investment core, the law does three things. It closes two of the routes the current statute offers, keeps another, and creates one that did not exist before.
The Two Routes Latvia Is Closing
The statute now in force lets a foreigner obtain residence by buying real estate worth at least €250,000 (about US$285,000) or by placing €280,000 (about US$319,000) as subordinated capital with a Latvian credit institution.
Neither survives the rewrite. Its grounds list leaves both out, ending the property route that drove Latvia’s program for years and the banking option beside it.
Holders are not stripped of what they have. Applications filed and accepted before the new law takes effect will run under current rules, and existing permits stay valid to their registration date, after which the holder reapplies under the law’s transitional rules.
Real estate did get one more hearing. Economy Minister Viktors Valainis proposed restoring it as a fresh ground, a five-year permit for property worth “at least €250,000” in Riga, Jūrmala, and a defined list of municipalities, or two properties of equal combined value elsewhere.
The committee rejected it, discarding the attached conditions on cadastral value, cashless payment, and certified valuations along with it.
The New €150,000 Fund Route
Article 27(1)(36) is the headline addition, a route absent when the bill entered its final reading. The adopted text grants a permit “for a period of up to five years, if a contract has been concluded and a transfer made for an investment of at least €150,000 (about US$171,000) for no less than five years to a state-created alternative investment fund manager,” against a further €10,000 paid to the budget.
What the route cannot do yet is take anyone’s money: The state-created fund that would receive the €150,000 has not been built, and the vehicle awaits separate legislation.
Andris Kulbergs proposed the route as a member of the Saeima, before becoming prime minister in late May; it reached the final text only after the responsible committee rewrote his version.
Kulbergs had tied the money to private funds that placed at least half their assets in Latvian companies. The committee replaced that with a single state-run manager, dropped the local-investment requirement, and added the €10,000 budget payment.
Under the statute, the permit stays valid only while “the state-created alternative investment fund manager confirms that the investment contract has not been terminated and the investment balance is no less than €150,000.”
The Permit That Survives
One pathway carries over, though for less time than the new fund route. Under Article 27(1)(10), a permit runs “for a period of up to two years, if [the applicant] has made an investment in the share capital of a capital company,” provided he pays €10,000 (about US$11,400) into the state budget and invests at least €50,000 (about US$57,000) in a company with no more than 50 employees and annual turnover or a balance sheet under €10 million.
A larger tier asks for €100,000 (about US$114,000) in a company that, together with its subsidiaries, employs more than 50 people and clears €10 million. No more than 10 foreigners may qualify through any single company.
The term is the main change. This route once gave a five-year permit, renewed annually through ID cards, and the new law cuts it to two. Its tax condition, at least €40,000 a year at the smaller tier and €100,000 at the larger, is unchanged.
The Proposals That Failed
Several other investment ideas reached the third reading and died there. Kulbergs floated a €150,000 stake in companies founded by Latvia’s special economic zone and freeport authorities, alongside a revival of a zero-interest government-bond route; both were rejected.
Two separate moves to stretch the company permit from two years to five, one from him and one from the economy minister, also failed.
A fiscal sweetener went the same way. He proposed letting investors on these routes become Latvian taxpayers through a flat annual payment of €60,000 (about US$68,000), which the committee declined.
The President’s Objections
Rinkēvičs built his case around the same investment provisions. The third reading drew 158 proposals, he noted, some technical and some that “created a fundamentally new legal framework” around residence for investment, leaving “several aspects” he wanted the Saeima to reconsider.
Real estate sits at the front of that list. He asked the chamber to weigh whether citizens of states in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the European Economic Area, and “possibly other countries friendly to Latvia” on a Cabinet list, should be able to request residence for buying property.
A similar appeal, he added, had reached him “from the largest representatives of the real estate transactions sector.”
On the fund route, he raised a narrower question. The legislator, he wrote, must gain assurance that the rule in point 36 “is complete and sufficient and that no delegation to the Cabinet of Ministers is needed,” for instance to check where investors’ money comes from and to define what it may fund.
His sharpest point concerned a hole the law had already exposed. As first passed, the fund route did not bar Russian and Belarusian citizens, and parliament rushed a separate amendment through on June 18 to close it; the committee chair, Raimonds Bergmanis, acknowledged the omission had slipped past lawmakers the first time. A fix arriving days before the law reached him, to Rinkēvičs, signaled a package assembled in haste.
The law does carry restrictions of its own. One clause routes discretionary permits for “citizens of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus” through the interior minister, available only where a grant “accords with international legal norms or is connected with humanitarian considerations,” with further limits added by a separate ministerial amendment.
A Decade of Tightening
Ainārs Šlesers introduced Latvia’s golden visa in 2010, when the country stood nearly alone in Europe. Russian buyers dominated the intake until a 2022 ban shut them out, and demand had already collapsed after 2016.
A critical 2018 Moneyval review pushed Latvia to tighten the regime and lean on its financial intelligence service to vet investors. This rewrite ends the property and bank routes that defined the early program.
The timing is not incidental. Weeks before passage, investigators were examining more than 20 firms over suspected abuse of the share-capital route, and the Progressives, the party that asked the president to return the law, point to that same record of laundering risk.
What happens next rests with the Saeima. It can re-adopt the law unchanged, which would oblige the president to promulgate it, amend it to meet his objections, or leave it unresolved through the recess. Until Saeima acts, the company route stays Latvia’s only working investment-migration pathway, and the fund meant to anchor its future has yet to be built.
