Assistants listed for 70 of Latvia's 100 MPs, parliament website shows

Assistants were listed for 70 of the 100 members of the Saeima, Latvia's parliament, on its website on 13 November, according to a szinas.com count of every MP's profile. The lists contain 96 assistants in total: 26 MPs have two, 44 have one and 30 have none listed so far. The 15th Saeima first sat on 3 November.

Group by group

All 17 MPs of the Latvia First group have assistants listed, 26 in total. All 15 MPs of the Sovereign Power/Young Latvians Union group have them too, 28 in total, with 13 of them employing two. The Progressives' ten MPs have 11 assistants between them, and New Unity's seven MPs have nine.

In the National Alliance group, seven of ten MPs have assistants listed. In the largest group, the United List, 14 of 41 MPs do, with 15 assistants in total. Eleven of the 12 MPs elected in Latgale, the eastern region, have 16 assistants between them, the same figure the regional news site Chayka.lv reported on 13 November.

What an assistant does and earns

An MP's assistant is a political post with no formal qualification requirements; the main criterion is the MP's trust. Assistants handle paperwork, organise meetings with voters and support the MP's work in parliament. The job pays €1,797 a month, and an MP who hires two assistants must split that sum between them, the TV3 investigative programme Nekā personīga (Nothing Personal) reported. MPs themselves earn €4,330 a month before tax in 2026, the Saeima website says.

Relatives and unelected candidates

MPs may not employ their own relatives or spouses, which counts as a conflict of interest and can lead to a fine. The law does not, however, stop them hiring another MP's relatives. Nekā personīga reported on 8 November that the new assistants include politicians who failed to win seats, MPs' spouses and family members of other party colleagues, as well as activists from party youth wings and election campaigns.

Ričards Šlesers, for example, who did not win a seat in the October election, is listed on the Saeima website as an assistant to Andrejs Klementjevs, an MP of the Latvia First group. The lists may still change, as some MPs are still looking for assistants. Parliamentary groups also hire advisers, which is not a political post: it is a full-time job with qualification requirements, and the number of advisers depends on the size of the group.