15 April
Riga Graduate School of Law will continue to offer competitive education
Press Release LETA
Information prepared by the University of Latvia Media Centre
Published: 15.04.2010.
The University of Latvia welcomes the Cabinet decision to allocate to the Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL) funds to settle its credit liabilities to allow successful future development of university academic and research work. The University of Latvia as one of the RGSL owners is fully prepared to ensure balanced future university activities, establishing RGSL as an international centre of excellence in European and international law.
In 1999, Riga Graduate School of Law received Latvian State-guaranteed credit from the Nordic Investment Bank for reconstruction of the building at Alberta street 13. The University of Latvia in negotiating a successful result has attracted Soros Foundation-Latvia funding, thereby ensuring that the Latvian government need not fulfill its guarantee in full (2.42 million lats).
The accelerated settlement of historical credit liabilities will relief the university's budget, providing a balance to RGSL financial flows and responsible use of resources to improve existing programmes and to develop new ones.
In spite of the outstanding credit, RGSL in recent years has taken convincing steps towards raising its competitiveness and academic capacity. In addition to seven accredited master's programmes, in autumn 2010 RGSL will offer two new bachelor's programmes to prospective students - "Law and Business" and "Diplomacy and International Relations" as well as a doctoral programme in cooperation with Copenhagen University.
In 2005 an agreement was signed between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Latvian Government about the Riga Graduate School of Law, under which the Swedish government's fee yourself RGSL parts (51%) of the Latvian government, which became the main shareholder (76%). While the Latvian government transferred its shares to the University of Latvia, thus RGSL became an independent Latvian University of ingredients. Soros Foundation Latvia continues to manage its shareholding of 24% higher share.