PARLIAMENTARY FORUM FOR DEMOCRACY NEWS
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EMPLOYEE NEWSLETTER
Lithuania. It should be noted that the draft was strongly criticized by
Group discussion, Tunisian School of Politics, 14 June 2013
Moscow law experts as an attempt to revise the political system of the USSR and as a document that was totally incompatible with the existing constitutional framework. There was even surprise expressed at how such a constitution could have been drafted at all. It should also be mentioned that focused action by the reform movement Sąjūdis encouraged the then Supreme Council to make one of the momentous decisions, that is the adoption of the Declaration on the National Sovereignty of Lithuania on 18 May 1989 showing only one way out of the situation – the restoration of the national sovereignty, which was the objective of the Lithuanian nation and an inalienable right of nations that could be implemented only by their self-determination. Amendments to the Constitution related to Lithuanian citizenship were made on the same day. Provision on“ common citizenship of the Union” of Article 31 of the Constitution was repealed and now the nature and conditions for granting or rejecting the citizenship were to be defined not by the USSR, but by the Lithuanian Law on Citizenship. Rights and freedoms of citizens were defined not by the USSR, but by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. Article 70 of the Constitution sets that only laws adopted by the Supreme Council or the referendum are valid in Lithuania, and only those laws and