Vilnius council meeting on waste crisis fails for lack of quorum

A special meeting of the Vilnius City Municipal Council, convened after a waste management crisis in the capital region, failed to take place because too few council members attended, LRT reported.

Only 15 council members registered for the meeting, while at least 26 are required for a quorum under the municipality’s rules of procedure, Mayor Valdas Benkunskas said.

“There is no quorum, so the meeting cannot be lawful and is considered not to have taken place,” Benkunskas said after registration. He added that the council’s next scheduled meeting would take place on August 26.

Ben­kunskas was met with chants of “Shame” from employees of the company Energesman.

The meeting had been initiated after Aleksandras Nemunaitis, a Vilnius council member and leader of the Lithuania For Everyone party, collected signatures from more than one-third of the council’s members. It was due to address a single issue: the provision of information about measures to ensure municipal waste management in Vilnius.

Nemunaitis told BNS that a meeting of the council’s Environment and City Services Committee had been held earlier on Friday. He said this had created a pretext for council members not to attend the special meeting.

According to Nemunaitis, the committee meeting only provided information, while the council meeting would have involved a vote on requiring the municipal administration to present a clear plan for managing the crisis.