At the request of Lithuanian parliament, constitutional court will clarify whether the law can establish the right to have dual citizenship for those citizens that left Lithuania to European Union (EU) and NATO countries.
At the end of June, the parliament appealed to the Constitutional Court to clarify the decision on citizenship law made in 2013. Parliament asks whether it is possible to establish a legal framework, without changing the constitution, that would allow double citizenship for Lithuanians that left the country after its independence.
When addressing the Constitutional Court, the parliament emphasized that the increase in emigration and the increase in the number of mixed marriages after Lithuania’s accession to the European Union created prerequisites for adjusting the extremely strict constitutional doctrine. Previous explanations by the Constitutional Court stated that possibility to have dual citizenship cannot be considerably expanded without changing the constitution by referendum. The proponents of dual citizenship worry that such referendum might be unsuccessful due to low turnout.
While addressing the Constitutional Court, parliament pointed out that currently there are over 22 thousand people with dual Lithuanian citizenship. Politicians say that this fact shows that current legal framework is already not in line with the official doctrine that dual citizenship should be a particularly rare exception, but not a widespread phenomenon. A survey by the market research company RAIT in April showed that 60% of Lithuanians are in favor of allowing the next generation of emigrants to have dual citizenship.
At the moment you can get a dual Lithuanian citizenship if at least one of your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were Lithuanian citizens and left Lithuania some time from 1918 to 1990. Dual Lithuanian citizenship means that you can get Lithuanian citizenship/passport and keep your current citizenship (or citizenships), according to Lithuanian law. However, this is an exception and dual citizenship is not allowed for Lithuanians that left Lithuania after 1990.
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