2 December 2010
The Seimas adopted the Law on Citizenship incorporating all the amendments proposed by President Dalia Grybauskaitė.
Following the Statute of the Seimas, the Parliament first of all voted on the proposal to adopt the entire law disregarding the amendments. 55 MPs voted in favour of such a proposal, 49 voted against and 23 MPs abstained from voting. Following the failure to pass the law without amendments, the Parliament took the vote on whether to pass the law with all of the amendments and supplements submitted by the President of the Republic. Consequently, 65 MPs voted for, 21 MPs voted against the proposal and 40 MPs abstained from voting.
The President returned the draft Law on Citizenship to the Seimas for repeat consideration. The President noted she welcomed most of the provisions of the newly adopted Law on Citizenship, however, in her view, the provision stipulating that citizens of the EU and NATO member countries may hold the citizenship of the Republic of Lithuania would make preconditions for dual citizenship as a commonplace phenomenon, which would contradict the provisions enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania.
In the Presidents judgement, the provision on exceptional cases for granting the citizenship of Lithuania cannot be applicable to predictions about the future, i.e., when believing or hoping that an individual holding the Lithuanian citizenship may possibly become a person of great merit for the Lithuanian state in the future.
Article 12 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania stipulates that, With the exception of individual cases provided for by law, no one may be a citizen of both the Republic of Lithuania and another state at the same time. It means that such individual cases provided by law may only be rare and that such legal regulation validating dual citizenship as a commonplace phenomenon is impossible.
In the Presidents opinion, emigration and diaspora problems need to be solved primarily by creating economic, political and legal conditions for each Lithuanian to return to his/her Homeland and build Lithuania by joint efforts since there is as much Lithuania as we carry in our hearts and support by our deeds. Secondly, these problems must be solved in a legitimate and legal way.
The following decisions were taken during the deliberation of the returned law by the Seimas Committees: the Committee on Legal Affairs proposed to adopt the Law on Citizenship with all the amendments suggested by the President of the Republic of Lithuania; the Committees on Foreign Affairs and on Human Rights suggested ignoring the proposals of the President and adopting the law returned to the Seimas for repeat consideration without any changes.
Paulius Saudargas, MP, spoke on behalf of the Homeland Union Christian Democrat Political Group at the sitting of the Seimas. He reminded that a compromise had been reached prior to adopting the Law on Citizenship and thus urged the MPs to stick to their opinions.
Kęstutis Daukšys, MP, representing the Labour Party Political Group, underscored everyones responsibility to his/her Homeland. In my understanding, citizenship is neither a privilege nor a comfortable way of life. First of all it represents a duty and responsibility to and a tie with your Homeland. We all have only one Homeland since it is impossible to have five, six or ten of them. We all have only one Homeland, just like one Mother. Therefore, each person should make his/her choice and decide which country he/she considers his/her Homeland and which countrys citizen he/she is. I thus suppose that dual citizenship should be a genuinely rare phenomenon, Mr Daukšys argued.
Accoding to Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, MP, Member of the Social Democratic Party, the Presidents veto is reasoned by Constitutional provisions, in the context of national security and in the context of international independence guarantees. It is only by way of a referendum on Article 12 of the Constitution that this interpretation can be altered.
Public Relations Unit
