Seimas weighs lifetime passports and ID cards for seniors

Lithuania’s parliament has begun considering a proposal to make passports and identity cards valid indefinitely for citizens aged 65 and older, LRT reported.

Under current rules, identity cards are valid for 10 years for citizens aged 16 to 70 and for 30 years for those aged 70 or older. Passports are valid for 10 years in all cases. The proposed amendments would make both documents issued to people aged 65 and over valid indefinitely.

In an initial vote, 48 lawmakers supported the amendments to the Law on Identity Cards and Passports, 12 opposed them and 29 abstained.

The Justice Ministry’s EU Law Group said the proposal conflicts with an EU regulation, which allows member states to set identity-card validity longer than 10 years only for people aged 70 and over. The United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization’s passport standards also require an expiry date in both the visually readable and machine-readable zones.

“We will take the comments into account; everything is open to discussion. I don’t think this changes the goal. In that case, we will propose extending validity until age 110, if that is the problem,” proposal author Kęstutis Mažeika told BNS.

Mažeika said the changes would reduce bureaucracy for older people and the Migration Department, which issues the documents. He said it was not the state’s role to burden people of very advanced age with additional requirements, citing the example of a 100-year-old who would need to renew both documents.

The Migration Department told BNS it issued nearly 232,000 identity cards and about 275,000 passports between January 1 and October 14 this year.

The proposal will next be considered by the Seimas Committee on Legal Affairs and Law Enforcement. Parliament is expected to return to the issue in mid-December. The Seimas Legal Department has recommended seeking the government’s assessment of the bill.