Administrative division of Latvia after Reform Act 2008

LATVISKI

Administrative division after the reform

After the reform from 18th December 2008 Latvia is divided in 9 republican cities and 109 regions.

In principle the law envisages to divide the country in several administrative units of higher rank - counties, which to great extent would conform to historical regions of Latvia. Sadly Saeima so far (this text is written in April 2009) has not taken a decision on division of Latvia in counties although there has been reached conceptual agreement on it. It is seen in another normative act - Amendments to law on Saeima elections adopted on 26th February 2009 where Latvia has been divided in the following electorates: Riga, Vidzeme, Latgale, Kurzeme, Zemgale.

According to law regions after the reform still are divided in regional municipalities and regional towns which correspond to municipalities and towns before the reform.

List of regions and republican cities

Table lists all regions and republican cities of Latvia. Area of administrative units has been obtained by summing up the area of municipalities and towns shaping each region. Borders of separate municipalities were not changed at the moment of reform. Population data have been obtained by summing up the data of separate municipalities obtained from the Website of Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, publication "Latvijas iedzivotaju skaits pasvaldibas, 2009.gada 1.janvaris".

Sadly author can not warrant that the area of municipalities given here is exact - data have been obtained from different sources which have been published in different times and it is possible that borders of separate municipalities have changed through internal land exchange between municipalities.

The order of the data in table can be changed by clicking on headings of the table. For finding largest or smallest regions better click on "% of country" column.