Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

NIB, the multilateral development bank owned by the eight Nordic and Baltic member states, signed a EUR 28 million (USD 32.4 million), 16-year loan with Ltd. WPR2 to finance "Project Simpson," a 112 MW greenfield wind farm in Smiltene, northeastern Latvia, expected to generate approximately 283 GWh (P90) annually. The loan qualifies under the InvestEU Clean Energy Transition Framework and is co-financed alongside the EBRD and Luminor Bank. NIB financing at preferential development-bank rates functions as a below-market state-adjacent subsidy supporting Latvia's under-developed wind sector, which totaled only 136 MW of installed capacity at year-end 2024.

The Aizsardzības industrijas likums (Defence Industry Law), adopted by the Saeima on 27 March 2024 and published in Latvijas Vēstnesis No. 70 on 10 April 2024, is Latvia's first standalone statute codifying state-support instruments for domestically registered defence-industrial-base firms. The law establishes a strategic-partnership agreement framework between the Ministry of Defence and Latvian-registered defence-tech manufacturers (including the Latvian drone-tech cluster — Atlas Aerospace, UAV Factory, Edge Autonomy Latvia), defines continuity-of-operations and supply-security obligations for strategic-partner firms, and provides a procurement-preference channel for Latvian-registered defence suppliers in MoD and State Defence Logistics and Procurement Centre contracting. The law also streamlines export-licence processing for qualified Latvian strategic- goods exporters and aligns state-support measures with EU Treaty Article 346 defence-exemption and EU European Defence Fund / EDIRPA co-financing rules.

Latvia's Saeima adopted on 27 March 2024 amendments to the National Security Law (Nacionālās drošības likums), entering into force on 24 April 2024, that widen the perimeter of foreign-investment and ownership transactions subject to Cabinet of Ministers pre-clearance over "companies of significance to national security." The amendments expand the universe of regulated subjects beyond registered companies to include foundations and associations, tighten the rules on beneficial-ownership disclosure, and bring additional sensitive activities — energy security including LNG-terminal acquisitions, electronic communications, cybersecurity, and critical-raw-materials processing — under the regime, while clarifying Cabinet authority to impose conditions or unwind transactions retroactively. The law functions as Latvia's horizontal FDI-screening instrument under the EU-wide cooperation framework of Regulation 2019/452.