Matas Maldeikis

Matas Maldeikis is a Lithuanian politician serving as a Member of the Seimas (parliament) and a member of the Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats.

He was born on June 19, 1980 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

His mother is Aušra Maldeikienė and his father is Eugenijus Maldeikis, both well-known Lithuanian politicians.

Matas Maldeikis is divorced and has one son.

In 2006, he earned a master’s degree in management and business administration (International Trade program) from Vilnius University’s International Business School.

He studied political science at Vytautas Magnus University (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas), graduating in 2002.

In 2022, Maldeikis published a book titled *Pasaulio pabaigos istorija* ("The History of the End of the World"), a 200-page analysis of contemporary global challenges. It was his debut work as an author.

In 2020, prior to becoming an MP, he worked as an adviser on international relations and EU policy to the Seimas opposition leader Gabrielius Landsbergis.

He was the Seimas (Parliament) permanent representative to the European Union from 2016 to 2020.

From 2010 to 2016, he served as an adviser in the Office of the European Affairs Committee at the Seimas Chancellery.

From 2006 to 2010, Maldeikis worked as the head of the International Cooperation and Public Relations Division at the Vilnius County Governor’s Administration.

Matas Maldeikis officially became a member of the Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) on November 28, 2024, after being re-elected for a second term in the Seimas.

He officially assumed his seat in the Seimas on November 13, 2020, at the start of the 13th Seimas term.

Although he ran with the Homeland Union (TS-LKD) in 2020, Maldeikis initially did not plan to become a formal party member, instead collaborating with TS-LKD leaders for the election.

On October 15, 2025, Maldeikis rejoined the Seimas Committee for the Future (Ateities komitetas) as a committee member in the 14th Seimas (2024–2028 term).

He also became a member of the Seimas Youth and Sports Affairs Commission on December 4, 2024.

Starting November 19, 2024, in the 14th Seimas, Maldeikis has been serving as a member of the Seimas Human Rights Committee (Žmogaus teisių komitetas).

From November 2020 to November 2024, Maldeikis served as a member of the Seimas Budget and Finance Committee.

He was also a member of the European Affairs Committee in the Seimas during the 2020–2024 term.

Matas Maldeikis was a member (from Dec 17, 2020) and later Deputy Chair (from Sep 29, 2021) of the Seimas Committee for the Future, serving in those roles until November 2024.

From November 24, 2020 to November 14, 2024, Maldeikis was a member of the Seimas Commission for Parliamentary Scrutiny of Criminal Intelligence (Kriminalinės žvalgybos parlamentinės kontrolės komisija).

He was also a member of the Seimas Commission for the Rights of People with Disabilities from November 24, 2020 until November 14, 2024.

He was re-elected to the Seimas in 2024, securing a second parliamentary term for 2024–2028.

By the 2024 election, Maldeikis’s standing in the Homeland Union list had improved significantly – he was assigned number 13 on the party’s candidate list (a much higher position than in 2020 when he was last on the list).

Matas Maldeikis was elected to the Seimas in the October 2020 parliamentary elections as a TS-LKD candidate on the national party list.

Although he was placed last (141st) on the TS-LKD’s national candidate list in 2020, Maldeikis received enough preferential votes to rise to 21st place, thus winning a seat in the Seimas.

In the 2020 Seimas elections, Maldeikis not only secured a seat through the national list but also contested the single-member Sėlos vakarinė constituency (Biržai region). He advanced to the runoff there but was defeated by Valdemaras Valkiūnas, who won the second round (Maldeikis garnered roughly 42% of the vote to Valkiūnas’s ~58%). Maldeikis thus entered the Seimas via the multi-member list route rather than a single-member victory.

In the 2020 parliamentary election, Maldeikis also ran in the single-member Sėlos vakarinė constituency (Biržai region). He reached the second round of voting but ultimately lost to Valdemaras Valkiūnas, a wealthy self-nominated candidate, and entered the Seimas via the party list.

As an MP, in addition to his salary, Maldeikis is allocated funds for parliamentary expenses (office, travel, etc.), but misuse of these can spark controversy. In early 2025, it emerged that he had charged several personal items to his taxpayer-funded expense account – including late-night ride-hailing trips during holidays, a "YouTube Premium" family subscription, and even a selfie-stick. After public outcry and initial denials, Maldeikis conceded and vowed to reimburse a portion of the funds back to the state budget.

As a member of parliament, Maldeikis is legally obligated to declare his assets and income each year to the State Tax Inspectorate (VMI) for public transparency. In 2024, the VMI revealed that about 100,000 officials (including MPs) had filed their 2023 declarations. Maldeikis’s filings did not place him among the top asset-holders (121 individuals declared over €1 million in assets), indicating nothing extraordinary in his wealth or income disclosures.

As a Member of Parliament, Maldeikis earns a salary in line with official rates – about €3,356 gross per month (per 2019 figures). He has remarked that living on an MP’s salary in Vilnius can be difficult, highlighting that even with his own circumstances (property owner, divorced with one child), colleagues with larger families might struggle on that income.

Maldeikis’s asset declarations over the past decade indicate relatively modest wealth. For example, one of his filings lists a piece of real estate valued at around €100,000. He has not reported any significant business assets, and his income has derived chiefly from his public sector salaries.

From 2006 to 2010, while heading a division in the Vilnius County Administration, Maldeikis earned a modest civil servant salary (estimated around 2,000–3,000 LTL per month, roughly €600–€900). Public sector wage cuts during the 2009 financial crisis meant that by 2010, officials’ salaries had reverted to mid-2000s levels.

On September 16, 2025, Maldeikis joined a cross-party group of MPs formed to draft improvements to the Lithuanian Constitutional Court’s law.

On May 15, 2025, Maldeikis was appointed as the chair of a newly formed parliamentary group focused on enhancing state governance efficiency and the development of artificial intelligence.

Maldeikis became a member of the Parliamentary Group for Relations with Tibet on March 14, 2025.

On December 12, 2024, he joined the Interparliamentary Group for Relations with the Republic of India.

He joined the Parliamentary Group for Relations with the Holy See (Vatican) on December 10, 2024.

On December 10, 2024, Maldeikis became a member of the Interparliamentary Group for Relations with the State of Israel.

Maldeikis is a member of the Seimas Interparliamentary Group for Relations with Japan, which he joined on December 5, 2024.

He also joined the Interparliamentary Group for Relations with the United States on December 5, 2024.

In the 14th Seimas (2024–2028 term), Maldeikis serves as the deputy chair of the Parliamentary Group for Relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan), beginning November 21, 2024.

During his time in Seimas, Maldeikis served as the chair of the Lithuanian Parliamentary Group for Relations with Taiwan.

In December 2021, Maldeikis made international headlines by engaging in a Twitter dispute with a Chinese state media editor. After the editor called Baltic lawmakers “low-end European political actors” for visiting Taiwan, Maldeikis retorted that Xi Jinping was “sending his clown to attack us” and quipped that China should be called “The People’s Republic of Comedy.”

In late November 2021, Maldeikis led a delegation of parliamentarians from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on a visit to Taiwan, despite Beijing’s objections to such exchanges.

On June 6, 2025, Lithuania’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Seimas’s decision to form the VSD whistleblower investigation commission – and to approve its conclusions – violated the Constitution, effectively nullifying the commission’s results.

In 2025, Maldeikis faced public criticism for attempting to charge a late-night New Year’s Eve ride to his parliamentary expenses. He defended himself by saying he “does not separate time for being a politician and being a person,” which sparked backlash.

Maldeikis served on a special parliamentary inquiry (the "VSD whistleblower" commission) in 2023–2024 that investigated allegations of improper conduct by the State Security Department (VSD) in relation to President Gitanas Nausėda’s 2019 election. The commission’s findings, approved in early June 2024, asserted that Nausėda had been made "vulnerable" due to his and his advisers’ ties with a Belarusian fertilizer business.

On December 7, 2023, Maldeikis made a Facebook post insinuating that members of the party “Nacionalinis susivienijimas” (National Alliance) were fascists willing to accept funding from foreign industrialists. He wrote that “it appears fascist ideology ends at the cash register” and implied the party was no exception. The National Alliance filed a complaint, and although Maldeikis did not explicitly label them fascists, the Seimas Ethics Commission noted that his comment could create the impression that the party espouses fascist ideology.

In October 2023, the Seimas Ethics and Procedures Commission concluded its inquiry and unanimously agreed that Maldeikis’s behavior in this case was improper and must be halted.

Petras Gražulis denied Maldeikis’s claims, stating emphatically that he has no such partner and asserting “I am a heterosexual man.”

On June 30, 2023, Maldeikis publicly posted on Facebook accusing fellow MP Petras Gražulis of having a long-term male partner (referred to as “D.”) financially supported by others.

In April 2021, Maldeikis reported that a Seimas aide named Kęstutis Motiečius (an assistant to MP Mindaugas Puidokas) had offered him a €50,000 bribe in the Parliament building, seeking to halt the consideration of stricter gambling tax regulations.

Maldeikis is also known as a public policy commentator, having authored opinion pieces in Lithuanian media on international affairs and national policy issues.

Despite hailing from a politically prominent family, Maldeikis has no indications of unusual personal wealth. His mother, economist and former MP Aušra Maldeikienė, and his father, ex-MP Eugenijus Maldeikis, are not listed among Lithuania’s richest public officials. Matas Maldeikis’s financial profile thus reflects that of a career public servant rather than an affluent investor or business owner.