Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Medicine

The World Anti-Doping Code obliges each country’s government to ensure the national anti-doping organization’s autonomy and noninterference in its decisions and activities. Latvia’s current legislation, however, regulates the national anti-doping system and its work, which means that it does not meet the autonomy requirement. The Anti-Doping Department of the State Sports Medicine Center needs the Anti-Doping Committee’s permission to run doping tests, and the department itself works under the supervision of the center and the Health Ministry, which does not ensure its autonomy.

To ensure the Anti-Doping Agency’s financial independence, a special sub-program will be created in the Latvian budget, and a regulation will be provided for appealing anti-doping rulings in line with international anti-doping conventions and the World Anti-Doping Code.

The government has also decided to create the Latvian National Anti-Doping Council which will be working as a consultative institution dealing with anti-doping matters.

The Health Ministry said that under the current regulation athletes are punished for violations of anti-doping rules by their respective national sports federations whose disciplinary committees find themselves in constant conflicts of interests. The draft amendments to the Sports Law are intended to solve this problem as they provide for the creation of an independent Disciplinary Anti-Doping Commission.

Around EUR 700,000 have been earmarked in Latvia’s 2018 budget for the creation of the Latvian Anti-Doping Agency.

The draft amendments to the Sports Law have yet to be approved by Saeima.