Lithuania’s Social Democrats have taken the lead following the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday. Preliminary results show they have garnered about 20% of the vote.
Party leader and MEP Vilija Blinkevičiūtė is confident that her party can form a coalition, possibly with other left-leaning forces. It would mark a change from the current coalition, in power since 2020, between the Christian Democrats and two liberal parties. The Christian Democrats came in second, with 18% of the vote.
A new force in Vilnius’ political landscape, the populist Dawn of Nemunas, convinced 15% of voters. The party is less than one year old.
About 2.4 million eligible voters in Lithuania choose their representatives in two rounds. The parliament's 141 seats are filled in a complex process involving both party lists and direct representation. A second round of voting takes place for candidates in constituencies with no clear winner. This year, that will be held on 27 October.
Though the parliament will only be complete after the second round, a change in government is already likely. In an interview with The Parliament, Linas Kojala, director of the Vilnius-based think-tank, Eastern Europe Studies Centre, outlines what a new government led by the Social Democrats could mean for the EU — and why Lithuania appears to be bucking the far-right trend seen elsewhere in the bloc.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity:
What explains the Social Democrats’ strength in Lithuania?
We've never had in our history since independence a situation where the governmental party gets re-elected in the parliamentary elections. So, in a way it's a normal shift from centre right to centre left in Lithuanian politics, and it was widely predicted.
We didn't have radical right or radical left parties that would be as strong as in many other European countries. But what we have today is this new political party, which is called [Dawn of Nemunas]. And it's hard to describe this political party. They are not pro-Russian. They are not against NATO. They want to fund the German brigade and its deployment to Lithuania. So, it's very hard to describe what kind of ideology they represent and where they stand on the scale of left to right.
I think we are a strange animal on the map of European politics, not having radical right or radical left parties strongly represented in the parliament or at least gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that's still the case. And it's primarily because I think this new political party got 15% of the vote. That's an enormously high number.
That's not the first time where there's a new political party — not ideologically aligned to the left or the right necessarily, more like a protest vote party — which destroys any chance for real radical parties to gain momentum and get a lot of votes.
How would you characterise the Lithuanian Social Democrats?
It's a typical centre-left political party that has a lot of commonalities with traditional centre-left parties all around Europe. It's led by Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, who is a member of the European Parliament for many years, and she's a very popular politician in Lithuania because a lot of Lithuanians still remember when she was a minister of social affairs almost 20 years ago, and she increased pensions, increased salaries to some people. And since then, she remained an extremely popular politician in Lithuania, even though she was not active in Lithuanian politics per se for many years.
She leads a traditional centre-left party, and this party is an umbrella party. So a lot of people that don't like the centre-right political parties, they don't like liberals, they can vote for Social Democrats because they are good enough — not necessarily the primary option, but they are good enough.
In Lithuania, the history of the Social Democratic Party was always a very strong one. It actually led more governments than centre-right political parties. It went down a little bit in 2020. They had some internal disagreements, internal conflicts. They didn't have strong leadership at that particular moment of time. But since 2020, they regained internal confidence, they have regained internal effective work. And that led to this very positive result.
The second round is yet to come. How confident should the Social Democrats be that they can form a coalition and lead the next government?
So, of course, the numbers matter. It depends on whether three parties [are] enough to form a ruling coalition or not. Because if that's the case, it's much simpler for the Social Democratic Party to lead the country. If that's not the case, then we could have a very much mixed coalition.
But who is going to be the third partner is a debateable question, because one option could be Farmers and Greens. So this is one option, but they have some personal disagreements with some leaders of Greens and farmers. So the question is whether the negotiations would be successful, not from the point of view of their ideologies, but more from the point of view of personal relationships. If those parties do not agree with one another, the other option would be the liberal union, which is in the current government.
The big question is whether [Dawn of Nemunas] could be invited to the ruling coalition as well, because the Social Democratic Party said that they [would] not work with them prior to the elections because they are kind of outcasts in our politics today.
Lithuania shares a border with Belarus and Kaliningrad. Do these results change security at all for the EU?
I don't think there's going to be a major change in Lithuanian foreign or defence policy for a couple of reasons. First of all, the lead politician in these matters is the president, at least that's according to our Constitution. Of course, the president does not determine budgets, does not determine taxes, which is so important today when we discuss defence matters. But still, the president leads the way. And the Social Democratic Party has a very close relationship with the president.
The president's position is pretty clear, and the Social Democratic Party has also emphasised how supportive they are of an increased defence budget; how supportive they are of what's needed to fund the deployment of German brigades to Lithuania. They are obviously supportive of European integration. In general terms, I think the Lithuanian foreign and defence policy will remain intact.
Does the election have any other policy implications for the EU?
Lithuania will remain a stable partner, a partner that's on the path of stronger European integration rather than any sort of fragmentation. A partner that has a lot of politicians who are already quite active in Brussels or in European politics, such as Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, who is a likely option for the prime ministerial position.
There are a couple of other former and current members of European Parliament in the party's list. So, I think that will mean Lithuania is going to be on the same track as recently. Because in terms of NATO, in terms of the European Union, there were no major disagreements between the Homeland Union, the leading centre-right party, and the Social Democrats over the last four years. And that's why actually the current governmental party, the Homeland Union, was urging Social Democrats to work together and to form a coalition after the elections because they see that there are no major disagreements on these issues. But the Social Democrats were not keen.