Lithuanian parliament plans winter vote to lift nuclear weapons ban

Lithuania’s parliament plans to amend the Constitution this winter to remove a provision banning weapons of mass destruction from the country’s territory, LRT reported. Parliament Speaker Juozas Olekas said the autumn session would likely have to be extended until January 13, 2027, to complete the process.

“Our legislative schedules and deadlines will probably force us to extend the autumn session somewhat so that we can adopt this article of the Constitution,” Olekas said at a meeting of parliamentary leaders on Thursday.

In early July, the Seimas approved, at the initial stage, a proposal to amend Article 137 of the Constitution by removing the provision on the deployment of nuclear weapons in Lithuania. The proposal received backing from the parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs and Law Enforcement on Wednesday.

Article 137 currently states that weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases cannot be located on Lithuanian territory.

Olekas has said the provision no longer reflects the geopolitical reality. According to him, preserving peace is the state’s priority in the current situation, while deterrence is important for that goal and nuclear weapons provide the greatest effectiveness in deterrence.

He said Lithuania, with such a constitutional restriction, “looks like a white crow” in the NATO context.

Amending the Constitution requires at least 94 of the Seimas’s 141 members to vote in favour twice, with a three month interval between the votes.

About 50 lawmakers from nearly all parliamentary groups signed the initial initiative. No politician from the opposition Nemunas Dawn party supported the proposal.

Discussions on deploying nuclear weapons have also been prompted by an idea presented in March by French President Emmanuel Macron to create a new European nuclear deterrence scheme. Under the proposal, partner countries could temporarily host France’s strategic air forces equipped with nuclear weapons.

The Financial Times reported in early June that the United States was considering deploying nuclear weapons in several additional NATO countries in Europe.