Liudas Mažylis

Liudas Mažylis was born on 19 May 1954 in Kaunas.

Mažylis holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and earned a Habilitation in Management and Administration in 2007.

In 2002, Liudas Mažylis completed an academic internship at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

He obtained his Doctorate in Chemistry (as a Candidate of Chemical Sciences) in 1985.

He graduated from Vilnius University in 1977.

In 1972, Liudas Mažylis finished his secondary education at Kaunas 5th Secondary School.

He became an associate professor in 2000 and was promoted to full professor at Vytautas Magnus University in 2008.

Since 1997, he has been a lecturer at the VMU Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy.

From 1990 to 1993, he was the deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kauno laikas.

From 1977 to 1990, he worked at the Institute of Cardiology, publishing 15 scientific articles and co-authoring six inventions.

He has published 20 academic articles on topics such as European integration, local government policy, and public administration.

After serving only a few weeks in the Seimas, Mažylis relinquished his newly won parliamentary seat in early December 2024 to return to the European Parliament when an MEP vacancy opened up – a move he had hinted at following the elections.

He briefly served as a Member of the Seimas from 14 November 2024 until 5 December 2024.

During his short term in Seimas, he was a member of the TS-LKD parliamentary faction (Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrat Group).

He served as a Member of the European Parliament from July 2019 to July 2024, representing TS-LKD in the EPP Group.

Mažylis has been a member of the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party (which later merged into TS-LKD) since 1995.

He was a member of the Kaunas City Council from 1990 until 1995.

In the European Parliament (2024–2029 term), he serves as a member of the Committee on Development (DEVE) and the Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI).

He is also a member of the European Parliament’s Delegation to the EU–Moldova Parliamentary Association Committee and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly.

Mažylis is a substitute member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO).

In December 2024, he briefly served on the Seimas Commission for Suicide and Violence Prevention as well as the Petitions Commission.

Mažylis was a member of the Seimas Committee on Health Affairs during November–December 2024.

He also served on special European Parliament committees, including the Special Committee on Beating Cancer (2020–2022) and the Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic (2022–2023).

During 2019–2024, he was a member of the EP Delegation for relations with Belarus and the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly.

In the 2024 Seimas elections, Mažylis lost the single-member Žiemgalos constituency race to Social Democrat Orinta Leiputė, but he still entered the Seimas via the TS-LKD national list after voter preferences boosted him from 16th to 11th place on the party list.

In the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections, Mažylis was elected to the Seimas on the TS-LKD party list.

In the 2024 parliamentary elections, Liudas Mažylis secured a Seimas seat via the TS-LKD party list rather than winning a single-member district. TS-LKD won 28 mandates overall in that election, and Mažylis’s seat was one of the proportional representation (list) mandates.

Liudas Mažylis was the lead candidate of the Homeland Union (TS-LKD) in the 2019 European Parliament elections.

In the 2000 Seimas elections, Homeland Union (TS-LKD) won only 9 seats in total (1 single-mandate and 8 via the list). Mažylis, who again ran as a candidate, was not within the top eight on the list and thus was not elected to Parliament in 2000.

He participated as a candidate in the 1996 and 2000 parliamentary elections for the Seimas of Lithuania.

In the 1996 parliamentary elections, Mažylis was ranked 22nd on the TS-LKD party list and received 455 pirmumo (preference) votes – about 32.31% of TS-LKD voters marked his name on the ballot.

By contrast, a member of the Lithuanian Seimas earns roughly €4,000 net per month (as of 2024), which is about half of an MEP’s take-home salary.

As a Member of the European Parliament, Liudas Mažylis earned a substantial salary – around €7,800 "į rankas" (net per month) in 2024, plus additional allowances for travel, daily expenses, and office costs.

Mažylis’s asset declarations over the past decade have shown no unusual wealth spikes or major business assets. He is not listed among Lithuania’s top wealth-holding politicians – for example, a mid-2025 review found 121 public officials with declared assets over €1 million, a group that did not include Mažylis.

He was awarded the regalia of Honorary Professor of Vytautas Magnus University on 15 February 2018, during a ceremony marking Lithuania’s centenary.

He received the Commander’s Cross of the Order "For Merits to Lithuania" in recognition of his historic document discovery.

The city of Kaunas granted him the title of Honorary Citizen of Kaunas, acknowledging his achievements.

In June 2017, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis presented Liudas Mažylis with the national "Lithuanian Progress Prize" (10,000 euros) for finding the Independence Act.

Mažylis was also honored with the Stasys Lozoraitis Journalism Prize for his significant contribution.

On 29 March 2017, Prof. Liudas Mažylis discovered the original 16 February 1918 Act of Independence of Lithuania in the German Foreign Ministry’s archives in Berlin.

His maternal great-grandfather was Jonas Bliūdžius, a noted book smuggler and public figure in the Marijampolė region.

His paternal grandfather, Pranas Mažylis, was a prominent interwar physician known as the founder of Lithuanian obstetrics.

In 1977, Liudas Mažylis married Aldona, who is also a chemist; in 1987, their daughter, Liucija, was born.

His parents, Jonas Mažylis and Julijona Mažylienė, were both lecturers in Kaunas; his mother taught at the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute and his father at the Kaunas Medical Institute.

During World War II, his paternal grandparents Pranas and Antanina Mažylis hid Jewish people in their Kaunas clinic (established in 1936), and were later honored as Righteous Among the Nations for this bravery.