Šarūnas Birutis

Šarūnas Birutis was born on 1961-09-20 in Šiaulių district, Lithuania.

Šarūnas Birutis was born in the city of Šiauliai on 20 September 1961.

He is married and has one child.

He speaks English, Russian and Polish.

He earned a Master’s degree in Law in 2003 from the Lithuanian Law University (now Mykolas Romeris University).

In 1984 he graduated from Vilnius University with a degree in industrial economics.

As a Member of the European Parliament, he was entitled to the standard MEP salary. In 2025, an MEP’s gross monthly pay is €11,255 (about €8,772 per month after EU taxes), whereas during Birutis’s 2004–2009 term the remuneration was somewhat lower (the uniform salary statute took effect in mid-2009).

From 2017 to 2019 he headed a public institution called "Europos kryptis."

In 2003–2004 he was a member of the State Gaming Control Commission, appointed by the Prime Minister.

He founded and led the Small and Medium Business Division at the Ministry of Economy from 1999 to 2002.

From 1993 to 1999 he served as director of UAB "Mono-turizmas", which operated the “Nidos auksinės kopos” hotel.

He was the director of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House from 1989 to 1991.

He was director of the tourism firm "Taika" from 1988 to 1992.

From 1984 to 1986 he was Deputy Head of the Economic Planning Department at the Kaunas Thermal Power Plant.

From 1982 to 1984 he worked as an operator in the Economic Department of the National Academic Drama Theatre.

In June 2025, Birutis proposed establishing a national “Lithuanian Cultural Canon” – an official, continuously updated compendium of the country’s most important cultural works, figures, and cultural phenomena – as a firm foundation for cultural policy and the education system.

Birutis served as Minister of Culture in Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas’s government from 12 December 2024 until 25 September 2025.

In 2024, Birutis returned as a Member of the Seimas and joined the Social Democratic Party’s parliamentary group.

He was a member of the Švenčionys District Municipal Council in 2023–2024.

He joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party in 2022 and became a member of its Council.

He served as the acting chairman of the Labour Party in 2017–2018.

He served as a Member of the Seimas from 2012 to 2016 (11th Seimas).

He was Minister of Culture in Algirdas Butkevičius’s government from 2012 until 2016.

He was a member of Vilnius City Municipal Council from 2011 to 2012.

Birutis was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.

Šarūnas Birutis was a member of the Labour Party (Darbo partija) from 2003 to 2019.

He was a member of the Seimas Committee on Education, Science and Culture from 2013 to 2016.

In the Seimas, he also briefly served as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2012–2013.

In the 2024 Seimas elections (runoff held on 27 October 2024), Birutis defeated Freedom and Justice candidate Erikas Demidovas in the Nalšios pietinė constituency, securing 56.36% of the vote to Demidovas’s 43.64%.

He was elected to the Seimas again in 2024 (took office on 14 November 2024) representing the Nalšios pietinė constituency as a Social Democrat.

In the 2024 parliamentary elections, Birutis was re-elected to the Seimas in the Nalšios pietinė single-member constituency, winning roughly 55% of the vote in the runoff round.

Due to electoral boundary changes, his former Ignalina–Švenčionys district was reorganized into the new Nalšios pietinė constituency by 2024. Birutis ran there as a Social Democrat and won the seat in 2024 with roughly 55% of the vote in the runoff, a similar majority to his 2012 victory.

He ran for Mayor of Švenčionys District Municipality in 2023, placing second with about 23% of the vote and losing to Rimantas Klipčius in the first round.

In 2023 he ran as the Social Democratic candidate for Mayor of Švenčionys District Municipality.

After a pause in politics, Birutis announced he would run in the 2020 Seimas elections with the Lithuanian Green Party.

In the 2020 Seimas elections, Birutis (as an LSDP candidate) advanced to the runoff in the Nalšios pietinė constituency but lost to LVŽS candidate Gintautas Kindurys.

Birutis did not win re-election in 2016 – he failed to advance to the runoff in the newly formed Nalšios constituency. The top two candidates there were Gintautas Kindurys of LVŽS (who won with ~66% in the second round) and Vytautas Vaitkevičius of the Liberal Movement (~32%).

In that 2012 runoff, Birutis received 6043 votes (55.74%) against 4798 votes (44.26%) for his opponent Vilius Cibulskas.

He was elected to the Seimas in 2012, representing the Ignalina–Švenčionys single-member constituency as a Labour Party candidate.

In the 2012 parliamentary elections, Birutis won the Ignalina–Švenčionys single-member constituency with 55.74% of the vote in the second round.

In the 2012 parliamentary elections, Birutis won the Ignalina–Švenčionys single-member constituency with 55.74% of the vote in the second round, defeating Social Democrat Vilius Cibulskas.

By 2024, Birutis’s declared assets had decreased to about €1.146 million, still making him the second-richest minister in Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas’s Cabinet. This was roughly a 30% drop from his net worth a decade earlier (which was around €1.59 million in 2014–2015).

As of 2024, Birutis’s declared assets included €552k worth of buildings, €281k in shares (he holds stakes in companies such as Agrolit, Landborgir, the media company “Lietuvos rytas”, and Vilniaus Koti), about €143k in Lithuanian bank accounts, and various other assets. His wife Rasa had significant real estate holdings (~€528k in other buildings) and about €242k in savings (though also €250k in liabilities).

His declared assets have fluctuated over time. In mid-2016, Birutis’s family assets were about €1.51 million (per 2015 declaration), whereas by 2024 his personal assets totaled roughly €1.146 million. (Combined with his wife’s assets, their household wealth in 2024 was about €2.115 million.)

By 2015, Birutis had loaned out a substantial sum (about €792,000) from his assets, largely to fund business ventures. By 2024, the amount of outstanding loans on his declaration had dropped to €231,000, indicating that these earlier investments (e.g., his Bulgarian project) had been wound down or partially recovered.

In 2015 he was the wealthiest minister in the Butkevičius government, declaring about €1.59 million in personal assets (more than half of it in loans he had extended to others), while his wife Rasa Birutienė separately declared around €713,000 in assets.

During his tenure as Culture Minister (2012–2016), Birutis was the only member of the Butkevičius Cabinet whose family assets exceeded €1 million. His household declared about €2.3 million in wealth (including roughly €1.026 million in real estate, over €200k in savings, and about €792k in loans granted to others).

In 2015, as Minister of Culture, Birutis earned an average salary of about €3385 per month (gross). Since he was concurrently an MP, he did not receive a separate parliamentary salary.

As a Seimas member, Birutis’s official remuneration was relatively modest. In the 2012–2016 term, an ordinary MP’s take-home salary was just above €2,000 per month (it has about doubled to ~€4,000 net by 2024).

He was the chairman of the Interparliamentary Group for Relations with India in the Seimas (Parliament) from 2012 to 2016.

He later again served as the Industrialists’ Confederation representative to the Seimas and Government in 2010–2012.

He was the representative of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists (LPK) to the Seimas and Government in 2002–2003.

He was a member of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Youth Union (Komjaunimas) from 1986 to 1990.

He was President of the Baltic–India Chamber of Commerce and Vice-Chairman of the Lithuania–India Forum.

A few days later, facing criticism, he clarified that he was against allowing any "existing Russian culture" into Lithuania at that time, effectively supporting a ban on contemporary Russian cultural works during the war.

In December 2024, as Minister of Culture-designate, Birutis argued that it was "entirely wrong" to stigmatize all Russian people or culture, calling for a more nuanced approach despite the war in Ukraine.

In 2016, the Chief Official Ethics Commission found that Birutis violated conflict of interest rules by failing to declare a land plot his company owned in Bulgaria.

Birutis invested in an agricultural venture in Bulgaria that he failed to declare for years. In 2009, via a Lithuanian company, he and partners acquired about 18.5 hectares of land in eastern Bulgaria (worth ~€200,000) to cultivate spirulina algae. He financed this project by loaning ~LTL 2.3 million (≈€662,000) from his firm in 2008. This ambitious venture ultimately struggled, and Birutis did not disclose his involvement in Bulgaria for some seven years, until investigative reporters exposed it in 2016.

In 2016, Birutis publicly complained that culture in Lithuania was treated as worthless, stating that “from the very start, culture [has been] devalued like trash” and blaming systemic neglect rather than one individual.

He received a letter of commendation from the European Committee’s Director General for his significant contribution to Lithuania’s EU accession negotiations.

Birutis was awarded the “Aukso ženklas” (Gold Badge) honor by the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists.

Birutis’s latest declaration of private interests (as an MP and minister in 2024–2025) is available in the online PINREG registry. However, his earlier interest declarations from prior terms (before 2021) are not publicly accessible there, since the PINREG system was introduced only in 2021.