Zigmantas Balčytis

Zigmantas Balčytis

Zigmantas Balčytis (born November 16, 1953 in Juodžiai , Šilutė Rajongemeinde ) is a Lithuanian social democratic politician . He was the Acting Prime Minister of Lithuania from June 1 to July 4, 2006 after Algirdas Brazauskas announced his resignation. However, Balčytis could not find a majority in parliament, thereupon Gediminas Kirkilas was nominated on June 29, 2006 to succeed the resigned Prime Minister Brazauskas and elected as the new Prime Minister on July 4. He has been a member of the European Parliament since June 2009 .

Education and professional

After graduating as a financial economist from Vilnius University in 1976, he worked in various management positions (Ministry of Industry, Lithuanian Komsomol , State Philharmonic, trade union), switched to the private sector (asphalt producer) in 1992 and worked in the city administration of Vilnius in 1994 . From 1996 to 2000 he worked for the Lithuanian-Hungarian joint venture Lithun . He has been a professional politician since entering parliament in November 2000.

Political career

Zigmantas Balčytis had been a member of the Lithuanian democratic labor party LDDP, the successor to the Lithuanian Communist Party ( LKP ), since 1990 .

In 1995 he became a member of the Vilnius Municipality Council . After the unification of the LDDP and the LSDP in 2001 to form the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, he was elected directly to parliament in October 2001 as a candidate for the LSDP in the constituency of Šilalė - Šilutė . In 2004 and 2008 he managed to be re-elected, already in the first ballot (= more than 50% of the votes cast). Since November 2008 he has been chairman of the Social Democratic Group in the Seimas.

After the Social Democrats came to power in July 2001, Balčytis was a member of the governments of Algirdas Brazauskas and Gediminas Kirkilas , first as Minister of Transport from July 2001 to April 2005 and then as Minister of Finance from April 2005 to March 2007. On March 26, 2007, he submitted his resignation , although his son, who was on trial for forgery and attempted bribery, had previously been acquitted on the same day.

During his time as provisional Prime Minister, he was also provisional head of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

In the elections to the European Parliament in June 2009 , Balčytis ran as number 4 on the list of Social Democrats and, by accumulating votes, was one of three elected members of this party in the European Parliament. 2014 he was a candidate for President of Lithuania in the Lithuanian presidential election, 2014 . In the runoff election, however, he was unable to prevail against the previous President Dalia Grybauskaitė. In the European elections in Lithuania in 2014 , he managed to join the European Parliament with LSDP party colleague Vilija Blinkevičiūtė .

From 2015 he was deputy party chairman of the LSDP , deputy of Algirdas Butkevičius .

Failed election as prime minister

On June 20, 2006, the parliament voted on the election of Zigmantas Balčytis as the new Lithuanian Prime Minister. At the time of the election, the governing coalition of the Social Democrats, the Peasant Party , Liberals and the newly formed civil democracy had 52 votes. In the election, which took place in an open vote, Balčytis was unable to win any more votes to get the necessary majority of the MPs present behind him; the MPs of the Labor Party, whose votes Balčytis had hoped for, abstained for the most part (a total of 32 abstentions ). 48 voted against him. Following this defeat, Gediminas Kirkilas was proposed as the Social Democrats' new candidate for the leadership of a minority government.

Web links

• Personal website of Zigmantas Balčytis
• Entry on Zigmantas Balčytis in the database of representatives of the European Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Seimas MPs 2000-2004 ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Resignation as finance minister (lit.)
3. ^ MEPs from Lithuania in the European Parliament 2009-2014 ( Memento from February 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ [1]

predecessor	Office	successor
Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas	Prime Minister of Lithuania June 1, 2006 - July 4, 2006	Gediminas Kirkilas