Lithuania Considers Confidentiality Laws for Defense Industry Projects, Impacting Public Information

The Lithuanian Seimas is urgently considering changes to the law that would allow the public not to be informed about certain construction processes of defense industry production facilities, and the Deputy Minister of Economy and Innovation Erika Kurochkina pointed out that some methods of information should be abandoned for the sake of confidentiality. .

“It is only because of the confidentiality aspect that we have to exclude a certain part of advertising procedures from the process,” Kurochkina told Lithuanian Public Radio on Wednesday.

Changes to the laws are urgently being discussed in the Seimas, which provide for the possibility of waiving information procedures when implementing large projects in the defense sector, which the government considers is important for national security. The operators of these projects will be allowed not to publish information about the start of construction work, not to inform the public about the design process, as well as not to invite the public to participate in discussions project.

“We are not closing communication with the public at all. What we are suspending is the public approval procedures when individual elements of the technical project are built and when the public is informed about them when more construction work will be done,” said the deputy minister.

The changes, which make it easier for large Western arms and ammunition manufacturers to build factories in Lithuania as quickly as possible, provide for the possibility to start the construction phase of projects without a normal construction permit or environmental impact assessment, which will be the responsibility of the investor. received before the end of construction.

“It also sets a framework both for the company itself and for us to ensure that all the requirements are met in the end. That the impact on the environment is not negative, that it is met to building permit requirements,” Kurochkina said.

The Ministry of Economy and Innovation developed the changes in connection with the plans of the German defense industry company “Rheinmetall” to build a factory for 155 millimeter ammunition rounds in Lithuania. Representatives of the company and the government signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday.