At a time when the progressive part of the Latvian population was founding organisations for the restoration of independence, Janis Reirs defended and praised the ideals of communism.

[3] Together with Einars Repše, who later served as the Prime minister of Latvia from 2002 until 2004, Reirs was one of the founders of the New Era Party in 2002, which merged into the centre-right grouping Unity in 2010.

[3] Reirs became a member of the Latvian Parliament after the 2002 national elections and later served as Minister of Special Tasks in electronic administration from 2004 until 2006.

[3] In 2019, Reirs collaborated with his counterparts from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands to advocate for the establishment of a new EU supervisory authority that was intended to assume control over the regulation of money laundering activities within financial institutions, a responsibility previously held by individual member states.

[5] Reirs participated in the 2022 Latvian parliamentary election under the New Unity list, but did not receive enough votes to make it into the Saeima.