Integration monitor is a daily Latvian press digest on ethnic minority and society integration issues. The Monitor reviews the biggest Latvian dailies: Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga (in Latvian language), Vesti Segodnya (in Russian language). In specific cases other information sources are used. Latvian Centre for Human Rights is not responsible for information published by the media.

• Governing coalition came to an agreement about the changes to the referendum initiation requirements
• SIF announced grant competition for Latvian language courses

The governing coalition came to an agreement about the changes to the referendum initiation requirements. As reported, the first draft amendments to the Law on National Referenda and Legislative Initiatives, which were returned by the President for repeated revision to the Saeima, stipulated that initiators should gather 150,000 signatures of the voters in order to hold a referendum. Yesterday, the coalition decided to maintain the existing two stage procedure on initiation of referendum until 2015 and increased to 50,000 the number of signatures to be collected at the initiators’ own expense (five-fold increase from the currently required 10,000 signatures). The coalition has also decided that starting with 2015, a single-stage signature collection procedure will be introduced, requiring for 150,000 signatures to be collected at the initiators’ own expense (15-fold increase from the currently required 10,000 signatures). Chas, Vesti Segodnya, Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga

The Society Integration Foundation (SIF) announced grant competition for Latvian language courses. As reported, the government granted LVL 143,000 for this purpose. It is planned that about 2,000 residents will be able to attend the courses and improve language proficiency for level “2B” (intermediate level). Vesti Segodnya