Nausėda Targets Lithuania’s Nuclear Ban

Article 137 of Lithuania’s constitution does two things. It bars weapons of mass destruction from Lithuanian territory and bans foreign military bases. President Gitanas Nausėda now wants the whole article deleted. After meeting parliamentary faction leaders on 2 July, he said almost all agreed the clause had outlived its purpose. His proposal is repeal, not a tidier amendment.

That matters because Lithuania cannot change its constitution by political mood alone. It needs two separate votes in the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, each backed by at least 94 of 141 MPs, with a gap of at least three months between them. The governing coalition has 75 seats. A broad nod from faction leaders is useful. Producing the same constitutional majority twice is the real test.

The Clause Nobody Talks About

Most attention has gone to the nuclear part. But Article 137 also bans foreign military bases, and Lithuania already hosts a serious allied military presence. Germany plans to station a brigade of roughly 5,000 troops there by the end of 2027. Recent NATO exercises brought thousands more onto Lithuanian soil.

The clause was written in 1992 to make sure Soviet forces left. The text has stayed the same. The security reality has not. There is still no clear public legal explanation of whether rotating allied deployments are treated differently from permanent “foreign military bases”, or whether practice has simply moved faster than the constitution. Deleting Article 137 would remove that ambiguity. Lithuanian leaders, however, have not publicly shown that the existing wording is blocking military operations.

Legal Room, Not Nuclear Weapons

Acting defence minister Robertas Kaunas framed repeal as a way to ensure Lithuania can use the full range of NATO capabilities. Nausėda said there are no immediate plans to store nuclear weapons, and that Lithuania would remain within the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global pact that limits recognised nuclear-weapons status to five states (Internazionale/Reuters).

For Maltese readers, the distinction is familiar from EU law: changing the legal basis does not by itself create the capacity. It opens a door. NATO nuclear sharing depends on US custody of weapons, dual-capable aircraft, trained crews, and alliance-level planning. Only a small number of Western European states currently host such arrangements.

Moving weapons east would require hardened storage vaults, upgraded bases, US certification of aircrews to handle nuclear munitions, and a command chain for authorising release. That is not a switch flicked in Vilnius. It is infrastructure, training and political authority built over years. No verified US or NATO decision to station nuclear weapons in Lithuania has surfaced (CNBC).

Lithuania Is Not the Only One Asking

Finland lifted its own nuclear-weapons ban on 17 June through a parliamentary vote of 125 to 61. Finnish officials insisted no peacetime basing was planned. But the debate in parliament exposed real disagreement over whether removing legal restraints strengthens deterrence or invites countermeasures without delivering usable capability.

Poland’s National Security Bureau chief has said entry into nuclear sharing is a real possibility, with talks planned in Washington. Rzeczpospolita placed Lithuania’s move within a wider eastern-flank demand for equal deterrence status. But nuclear sharing is not granted by national legislation alone. It would require decisions by NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, the alliance forum where nuclear posture is discussed.

Lithuania’s argument is straightforward: a frontline NATO state does not want its own constitution to rule out alliance options before a crisis arrives. The counterargument is just as practical: legal eligibility without storage sites, aircraft, crews, and a US decision to deploy is political signalling rather than military capability. Whether repeal changes NATO’s posture, or only Lithuania’s constitutional language, will depend first on votes in Vilnius and then on decisions no allied capital has yet made public.