Lithuania Moves to Strip Its Constitutional Ban on Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Military Bases

Following a meeting with parliamentary and government leaders on 2 July, Nausėda said “almost all” faction leaders viewed Article 137 as “obsolete” and to be removed rather than amended, warning: “It would be truly unfortunate if we became the weak link or a grey zone within NATO.” On 3 July, 50 members of the Seimas formally registered the constitutional amendment. The bar is high: a two-thirds majority — 94 of 141 seats — in two separate votes at least three months apart. The opposition Nemunas Dawn party wants a referendum instead.

Speaker Juozas Olekas, tabling the change, stressed that Lithuania “does not plan to host nuclear weapons on its territory during peacetime,” and Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said any US nuclear deployment would be considered only in crisis or wartime. The prohibition already sits uneasily beside Germany's permanently stationed armoured brigade in the country. On the same day, prime-minister-designate Mindaugas Sinkevičius presented a cabinet retaining Kaunas at defence and Kęstutis Budrys at foreign affairs; Lithuania's 2026 defence budget, approved in December, runs to EUR 4.79 billion, or 5.38 per cent of GDP.

Vilnius sets the move against two precedents it cites directly: Finland, which repealed its own nuclear ban in June — though Finland's was a statute, not a constitutional article — and President Emmanuel Macron's March proposal for a European deterrence framework under which partner states could temporarily host French strategic air forces.

The proprietary read. The legal substrate of extended deterrence is being rebuilt state by state, and the frontline is moving first. The asymmetry is the substance: Finland lifted a law; Lithuania must clear the far higher constitutional bar, which is why the process will run into the autumn session. As Signal No. 95 noted, nothing material changes in peacetime — the minister says so — but that is the design: clear the law before the need, so that basing and nuclear-sharing decisions, French or American, become questions of policy rather than of constitutional revision under pressure.