Country data: Lithuania

All comparisons are with the figures for 10 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

The last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Member State authorities to address pressing priorities and affected their performance in transposing EU rules to some degree. In this context, the Commission has taken a number of extraordinary measures aimed at relieving the strain on Member States’ administrative resources. Nevertheless, it has also made clear that the Member States’ legal obligations to transpose EU directives in time remain unchanged.

Transposition deficit (percentage of all directives not transposed): 1.7% (last report: 0.8%) – a marked increase of 0.9 percentage points. Lithuania is one of six Member States that more than doubled their deficit in the reporting period and consequently missed the 1% target set by the European Council.
EU average = 1.6%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Lithuania has constantly performed well on this criterion, except in 2016, when the Member States had to transpose an unusually large number of directives. However, it is now missing the target, due to a 113% increase on its deficit in the previous reporting period. In addition, Lithuania did not transpose 10 of the 26 single market directives (38%) due to be transposed in the 6 months before the cut-off date for calculating the deficit (1 June to 30 November 2021). This shows that Lithuania may now have some difficulties organising the timely transposition of directives. Constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic did not help. However, transposition is an ongoing process and any let-up may result in the deficit quickly increasing.

Overdue directives: 17 (last report: 8), including 7 on financial services. No directive is more than 2 years overdue.

Average delay in transposing directives: 6.5 months (last report: 7.8 months) – a decrease of 1.3 months. Lithuania is one of nine Member States that reduced their delay in transposing directives in the reporting period.
EU average = 8.6 months

Lithuania managed to transpose one long-overdue directive (2 years or more). In addition, most of its outstanding directives (11 out of 17) have been due for less than 6 months.

Conformity deficit (percentage of all directives transposed incorrectly): 1% (last report: 1.1%) – a slight decrease of 0.1 percentage points. Lithuania is below the EU average.
EU average = 1.3%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

The number of new infringement proceedings that the Commission has launched against Member States for incorrectly transposing single market directives has more than halved in 2 years. Nevertheless, the number of ongoing cases is still high. With 10 directives presumed to have been incorrectly transposed, Lithuania is among the nine Member States with the lowest conformity deficit (1% or less).

All comparisons are with the figures for 1 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

Pending single market cases: 16 (3 new cases and 4 cases closed; last report: 17 pending cases) – a slight decrease of 1 case.         
EU average = 27 cases

Lithuania has always had a small number of pending cases, well below the EU average. It is now the Member State with the fourth lowest number of infringement cases (compared with third position in the previous reporting period).

The Commission launched 120 new cases against Member States in the reporting period (besides those for late transposition), and these were still pending on 1 December 2021. A total of 3 cases were launched against Lithuania, which is below the EU average of 4 new cases launched in a year. However, only 4 Lithuanian cases have been resolved since December 2020, which is half of the EU average (8).

Problematic sectors: the environment and transport (4 cases each). Together, these make up 50% of all pending cases.

Average case duration: 45.1 months for the 16 single market cases not yet sent to the European Court of Justice (last report: 34.2 months) – this is a marked increase of 10.9 months. Lithuania’s duration of cases is now longer than the EU average.             
EU average = 42.8 months

Lithuania’s average duration of cases has increased by 18% in the last 3 years. The considerable duration of the four Lithuanian cases that have been running for more than 7 years – on air transport and free movement of people and EU citizenship – is offset by the shorter duration of the 12 other cases.

Time taken to comply with Court rulings: 50.6 months for the only single market case at the Court-ruling  stage of the procedure and closed in the last 5 years (last report: same). 
EU average = 46.8 months

No change since the previous period. Lithuania has a single case on the registration of motor vehicles, which took 50.6 months for compliance.

Evolution of infringement cases

Performance – Lithuania performed very well.

• Results for four indicators were above the EEA average.
• Performance for requests accepted within 1 week was the second best result, and the satisfaction rate for the timeliness of replies was third best.
• Result for four indicators decreased slightly, most noticeably for requests answered within the deadline.

• Caseload – small
  Submitted cases: 21 (23 in 2020)
  Received cases: no cases (5 in 2020)

• Cases not accepted: 33 (31 in 2020)

• Resolution rate : n/a (100% in 2020)
• Handling time (as home centre)
  Reply in 7 days:  85% (89% in 2020) – good
  Cases prepared in 30 days: 95% (83% in 2020) – good
  Solutions accepted within 7 days: 94% (91% in 2020 ) – good

• Cases not accepted within 30 days: 79% (61% in 2020) - good

• Handling time (as lead centre)
  Cases accepted within 7 days: no cases (100% in 2020)
  Cases closed in 10 weeks: no cases (100% in 2020)
• Staffing level
  Needs improvement

In 2022, the average payment delay (the time exceeding the legal or agreed payment terms) by Lithuanian public authorities was 18 days.

The average number of days needed for a business to have its invoices paid by other businesses (business-to-business payments) was 53.87 days.

Note: A typical (mid-ranking) EU country is used for the EU average for all indicators except the publication rate. Due to delays in data availability, publication rate results are based on 2020 data.

Note: The EU restrictiveness indicator (EURI) measures the level of restrictiveness for the cross-border provision of services and the right of establishment for seven groups of professional services with a high share in the EU firms’ intermediate consumption or cross-border mobility. The level of restrictiveness is measured on a scale from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive).