The cabinet led by Andris Kulbergs is not entering a normal political cycle. Its declaration reads less like a broad reform programme and more like a crisis-management document: security, fiscal restraint, tighter procurement oversight and direct control over large projects.
The drone issue has moved from incident to governing agenda. The declaration promises additional unmanned systems, drone-detection capacity, stronger air-defence and electronic-warfare systems, with particular attention to border municipalities. It also places election security under direct prime ministerial supervision.
For investors, the most important section may be “large-project control”. Rail Baltica is to receive a new implementation model under direct prime ministerial leadership. airBaltic is to have its business plan assessed and further scenarios decided by August 2026.
The first public signals from ministers were uneven. Some ministries moved into sectoral continuity: investment, welfare priorities, health reform, energy-system resilience and airBaltic liquidity control. But the Interior Ministry stood out. On his first working day, Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava issued his first order on the use of the state language inside the interior system.
The order is not important only as language policy. It shows what the new minister chose to signal first. Latvia’s police capacity problem is already documented: staffing shortages, overloaded officers and weakened road-policing specialisation are not abstract risks. Against that background, the first visible act was not recruitment, response capacity or traffic-policing reform, but administrative and linguistic discipline.
This does not mean the new cabinet is paralysed. It means the opposite: it is moving quickly into control mode. But control is not the same as delivery. Latvia now has a government again. What it still needs to prove is execution.