Lithuanian president urges LRT council resignation to defuse growing crisis

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda urged de-escalation amid intensifying tensions over proposed amendments to the law governing the public broadcaster LRT, suggesting that a complete resignation of the broadcaster’s governing bodies could help resolve the crisis.

Speaking in Brussels on the sidelines of a European Council meeting, Nausėda said that if the conflict surrounding LRT had reached an irreversible stage, a full reset of its leadership would be preferable to hurried legislative changes, Caliber.Az reports, citing Lithuanian media.

“If the conflict has progressed so deeply that there is no way back to the starting point, then the LRT Council should resign in full, and the administration as well – the director general and her deputy,” Nausėda said. “We would then form a new LRT Council through all the institutions responsible for this, announce a new competition, and all citizens of the Republic of Lithuania could participate.”

According to the president, tensions escalated after the LRT Council began actively exercising its statutory responsibilities related to oversight, supervision, and strategic planning.

“As long as the LRT Council was merely an appendage of the administration, there were no conflicts,” Nausėda said. “But once it began carrying out a function that is normal in any business or political organisation – that a board supervises and controls management – conflicts began to arise.”

The dispute has deepened in recent weeks, with approximately two-thirds of LRT employees signing a letter submitted to the Council expressing no confidence in its work and calling for the resignation of both the Council and LRT’s senior management.

Nausėda described a voluntary resignation by the leadership as “a very understandable path” that could ease tensions and potentially make further legislative action unnecessary.

The president also sharply criticized opposition efforts to delay the adoption of the amendments by proposing what he described as absurd provisions, including a suggestion to involve a cat in decisions on dismissing the head of LRT. He characterized such tactics as a “hybrid attack against Lithuania.”

“Frankly, there is no longer any need to send balloons into Lithuania – Lithuanians are organising a hybrid attack against themselves,” Nausėda said. “And not to our benefit.”

By Vafa Guliyeva