The plan to submit such bills during the parliament’s autumn session was on Wednesday discussed by National Defence Minister Juozas Olekas and Speaker of the Seimas Loreta Graužinienė.
“We plan to submit such bills during the autumn session. They would improve service conditions for troops through the supply of weaponry, accoutrements and probably a new pay scheme,” the minister said.
“We don’t have the bills yet but we discussed the principles, and that’s important as the political situation is tense and we need to staff army units with troops,” Olekas told journalists after the meeting.
The defence minister had said earlier that the allocations for the national defence system in the 2016 budget would grow by a third to 1.46 percent of GDP. Lithuania’s defence budget for this year stands at 1.11 percent of GDP.
Lithuania’s main political parties have agreed to gradually increase defence spending to at least 2 percent of GDP by 2020.
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