The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,

commemorating the 700^th anniversary of Vilnius, welcoming the honour bestowed on the capital of Lithuania to host a NATO Summit, emphasizing that it is only through NATO’s efforts that peace lasted in Europe for nearly 75 years,

having regard to the necessity to fully implement the decisions of the Bucharest and Madrid Summits, to definitively erase grey security areas in Europe and the uncertainty with regard to Ukraine’s membership of NATO, since this encourages further aggression by Russia, hampers the successful democratic development of the entire region and jeopardizes the rules-based international order,

drawing attention to the fact that Ukraine’s victory over Russia’s aggression and Ukraine’s membership of NATO would consolidate sustainable peace not only in Ukraine but also in Europe as a whole, demonstrate that Russia has no veto on NATO’s enlargement, that Ukraine is free to choose the security and defence organizations to align with and that it is not in Russia’s sphere of influence,

emphasizing that NATO’s Open Door Policy has contributed substantially to security on the European continent and should be continued,

noting that the Euro-Atlantic values that unite NATO member countries are currently being defended and protected, first and foremost, by the people of Ukraine heroically resisting the aggressor,

noting that Ukraine is a security provider and that its membership of NATO would strengthen the Alliance, be much more effective and less costly than the support currently provided to Ukraine to defend itself,

having regard to Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russia’s aggression and the determination and resolve of the people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom until the aggressor is finally expelled from the Ukrainian territory within its internationally recognized borders as of 1991,

emphasizing that Finland’s and Sweden’s membership of NATO will strengthen the Alliance and the security of Europe as a whole,

drawing attention to the fact that occupation, annexation or political subjugation at any price of territories of other states is an essential objective of the imperialist foreign policy of today’s Russia and it will continue pursuing such policy in the future,

reminding that Russia is planning to significantly increase its military presence along the eastern flank of NATO and has announced plans to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of its ally Belarus,

noting the significant annual increase in investment in Lithuania’s national defence over the past eleven years and the efforts of the US and other NATO member countries to strengthen defence capabilities on the eastern flank of NATO, especially in the Baltic region, with a view to developing a credible NATO forward defence approach,

considering that the democratic world is facing a growing threat from China to the rules-based international order,

noting that only the united action of all Lithuanian state institutions, as well as all political parties represented in the Seimas, together with the Allies, can contribute to consolidating the historic success of the NATO Summit in Vilnius,

affirms the following key goals of Lithuania at the NATO Summit to be held in Vilnius:

1) to significantly strengthen the forward defence and deterrence of the Baltic region and the entire eastern flank of NATO in line with the principle of ‘deterrence by denial’, by implementing the commitment made at the Madrid NATO Summit to scale up the Allied battlegroups permanently deployed in Lithuania to a brigade-size unit; to strengthen the integrated air and missile defence, including air defence capabilities in Lithuania and in the region, thus ensuring a smooth transition from air policing to air defence; to ensure the readiness to host Allied forces through the prepositioning of Allied military equipment and other assets;

2) to give full support to Ukraine through practical measures, including NATO’s political support, recognizing the necessity to invite Ukraine to join NATO at the NATO Summit to be held in Vilnius (by signing accession protocols and initiating the ratification process when the conditions are right), as a strategic solution by NATO to achieve peace in Ukraine and Europe; to seek an increasingly deeper integration of Ukraine into NATO’s structures and processes prior to Ukraine's accession to NATO;

3) welcoming Finland’s membership of NATO, to actively contribute to the earliest possible ratification of the protocols of Sweden’s accession to NATO by Hungary and Türkiye ahead of the Vilnius Summit;

4) to seek the commitment of all NATO member countries to significantly increase defence funding by spending not less than two per cent of gross domestic product from 2025 onwards and to agree on an ambitious commitment of all NATO member countries to increase long-term investments in defence capabilities and defence industry;

5) to expand and strengthen practical cooperation between NATO and its Indo-Pacific partner countries, including in the areas of technology, cyber defence and resilience to hybrid threats, and the pursuit of the rules-based international order.

Speaker of the Seimas Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen