Lithuanian committee backs removing nuclear weapons ban from Constitution

Lithuania’s Seimas Law and Law Enforcement Committee on Wednesday backed a proposal to remove from the Constitution a provision banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in the country, LRT reported.

Seven committee members voted in favour and two voted against. The opposing votes came from Ignas Vėgėlė of the Mixed Group of Members of Parliament and Raimondas Šukys of Nemuno Aušra.

Article 137 of the Constitution currently states that weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases may not be located on Lithuanian territory.

Seimas Speaker Juozas Olekas, who attended the meeting, said the provision no longer reflected the geopolitical reality. He said it had been adopted when Lithuania was occupied and was intended in part to help remove the occupying army.

Olekas said preserving peace was Lithuania’s priority in the current geopolitical situation and that deterrence was essential to achieving it. He said nuclear weapons provided the greatest effectiveness for deterrence and argued that Lithuania appeared “like a black sheep” in the NATO context because of its constitutional restriction.

Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas also stressed the importance of deterrence, saying the ban affected the security of the entire region. Without the constitutional restriction, he said, allies could, with Lithuania’s and the region’s consent, fly over its territory to demonstrate that NATO protects its territory.

Seimas decided to begin considering the amendment in early July. At the initial stage, 89 MPs voted in favour, 11 against and six abstained.

Amending the Constitution requires at least 94 of the 141 MPs to vote in favour twice, with a three-month interval between the votes.

About 50 MPs from nearly all Seimas factions signed the initial initiative. No politician from the opposition Nemuno Aušra supported it. At the first vote, eight of the party’s MPs voted against and five abstained. Valius Ąžuolas of the Lithuanian Peasants and Greens Union and two MPs from the Mixed Group also voted against, while another member of the group abstained.

Šukys said completely removing Article 137 without introducing new regulation would be dangerous and pose an existential threat to the state. He called for clear safeguards on decision-making and oversight mechanisms and urged the holding of a consultative referendum.

Former Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said Lithuania could not ask Russia to delay hybrid attacks. She said the amendment was intended to strengthen deterrence guarantees and that political decisions sometimes had to be made in less than ideal circumstances.

Vėgėlė asked who would decide whether to allow nuclear weapons to be deployed and where they would be stationed. Judita Nagienė, director of the Defence Ministry’s Legal Department, referred to Article 142 of the Constitution, which provides that the Seimas makes decisions related to armed defence.

Nagienė said Lithuania had an established practice of having the defence minister coordinate and submit proposals on the most important defence matters to the State Defence Council, with decisions taken collectively.

The issue is expected to return to the Seimas chamber during the autumn session, which begins on Thursday.