He brought forward the proposal during Friday’s conference at the Presidential Palace which discussed the implementation of the Agreement on the Strategic Guidelines for the 2014-2020 Foreign, Security and Defence Policies signed by Lithuanian parliamentary parties.
Auštrevičius says the agreement is welcome but Lithuania will be governed by coalitions in the future. It is unknown who will form coalitions and whether similar agreements will be favoured. Therefore, the MEP believes it is time to consider including defensive commitments in the Constitution.
According to Auštrevičius, inclusion of the matter in the Constitution would prevent politicians from speculating and delaying allocating funds for defence. He says that Constitutional supervision is operating well in Lithuania and, as a democratic country, it should commit itself to responsible actions in the future. The politician believes that lawmakers should formulate the proposal.
Based on the agreement of parliamentary parties, defence spending should be increased to 2 percent of GDP by 2020.
The State Defence Council has proposed to allocate EUR 150 million greater funding to the Ministry of National Defence next year.
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