Dovilė Šakalienė

Dovilė Šakalienė was born on 1978-06-01 in Kaunas, Lithuanian SSR (now Lithuania).

In 2021, she began postgraduate studies in Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy at the Neuroscience Institute of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, though these studies were suspended in 2023.

Šakalienė obtained a master’s degree in Legal Psychology from Mykolas Romeris University in 2003.

In 2001, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy of Vilnius University.

She graduated with honors from the Panevėžys Fifth Secondary School in 1996.

While in secondary school, Šakalienė spent an exchange semester in 1994–1995 at Cibola High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, via the Open Lithuania Fund program.

Until June 2016, Šakalienė simultaneously worked as a columnist for the news portal Delfi Lietuva, as a radio show host and author on Žinių radijas (with programs like "Kas graužia tėvus" and "Nepaprastos istorijos"), and as a strategist and public policy consultant at the communications firm Big Idea Group Lietuva.

From 2012 to 2016, Šakalienė was an accredited journalist to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

During 2011–2012, at the invitation of the Norwegian Government, she helped design the civil society support program for the second funding period of the EEA Grants, and she led the implementation of this program from 2013 to 2016.

Between 2011 and 2015, she was a contributor to programs on the Lithuanian radio station Žinių Radijas.

She was a founding member of several advocacy coalitions – including the “Už vaiko teises” (For Children’s Rights) coalition, the National Human Rights Coalition, and the “Psichikos sveikata 2030” (Mental Health 2030) coalition – and for many years she actively worked to shift child welfare in Lithuania from institutional care to family- and community-based services.

In 2010, Šakalienė initiated a review of the European Economic Area (EEA) Grants mechanism for supporting civil society in Lithuania, and as a result of her appeal the Norwegian Parliament decided to separate NGO funding from state-controlled funds in that program.

From 2004 to 2015, Dovilė Šakalienė worked at the Human Rights Monitoring Institute (Žmogaus teisių stebėjimo institutas), a non-governmental organization focused on monitoring human rights in Lithuania.

After completing her master’s, she lectured at Mykolas Romeris University on topics such as antisocial behavior psychology and criminal psychology.

She served as Lithuania’s Minister of National Defence from December 2024 until October 2025.

Šakalienė was appointed as the Minister of National Defence of Lithuania on 12 December 2024, serving in the government of Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas.

Šakalienė served as a Lithuanian representative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from January 23, 2017, to January 21, 2018.

On 23 October 2017, the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania (LSDP) invited Dovilė Šakalienė to join its parliamentary group, marking her departure from the LVŽS faction.

In 2017, Dovilė Šakalienė left the LVŽS parliamentary group and became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania (LSDP).

Šakalienė is known for championing a 2017 child protection reform law that banned all forms of violence against children, a measure often colloquially referred to as the “Šakalienė law.”

Šakalienė has been a member of the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) since 2016, serving in the 2016–2020, 2020–2024, and 2024–2028 parliamentary terms.

She has served as a member of the Seimas National Security and Defence Committee.

In the 2016–2020 Seimas term, Šakalienė served as a member of several committees: she initially sat on the Foreign Affairs and European Affairs Committees (2016–2017), later joined the Education and Science Committee (2017–2019), and then moved to the National Security and Defence Committee (2019–2020).

In the October 2024 parliamentary elections, the Social Democratic Party (LSDP) won 19.36% of the national vote (securing 18 seats in the proportional multi-member constituency). LSDP ultimately emerged as the largest party in the Seimas with 52 of 141 seats, and Šakalienė was re-elected as an MP, most likely via the LSDP’s party list given her prominent position and the party’s strong performance.

In the October 2020 parliamentary elections, the Social Democratic Party (LSDP) won 8 seats in the multi-member constituency with 9.26% of the vote; Šakalienė ended up as the 8th ranked LSDP candidate after preferential votes were counted, which allowed her to claim the last of those eight proportional-seats in the Seimas.

In the 2016 parliamentary elections, she was elected to the Seimas via the nationwide multi-member constituency on the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS) list.

In the 2016 Seimas elections, Šakalienė was placed 30th on the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS) list, but after the tally of preferential (reitingas) votes she jumped to the 17th position, thereby securing a seat in Parliament via the multi-member constituency.

As a minister in 2024–2025, Šakalienė’s official salary would be higher; for context, cabinet ministers earned about €3,105 per month in 2017, and by 2025 this figure is estimated to have risen to the mid–€3,000s (approximately €3,500) following public-sector pay increases.

By late 2024, an ordinary Seimas member’s salary had nearly doubled from mid-2010s levels: backbench MPs were earning about €4,000 “į rankas” (net) per month (roughly €6,700 gross), compared to just over €2,000 net around 2016.

Her family’s total declared assets (including her husband Valdas Šakalys’s holdings) have been roughly in the €144,000–156,000 range in recent years, while the couple’s combined debt dropped from €77,102 in 2020 to only €108 by 2023.

Before the 2020–2024 term, Šakalienė was noted as one of the least wealthy incoming MPs – her 2019 declaration showed about €13,000 more debt than assets, a situation she explained was due to a home mortgage listed entirely under her name while the property’s value was split with her spouse.

In her 2019 asset declaration (just before her second Seimas term), Šakalienė reported owning apartment(s) valued at €64,535 – a figure that remained unchanged in her declarations through 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Šakalienė’s liabilities decreased dramatically during her second term: in 2019 she had about €92,884 in loans outstanding, which by 2023 had been paid down to just €108 of remaining debt.

Šakalienė’s financial declarations indicate a rapid improvement in her net worth during her second term. In 2019, her outstanding loans were about €92,884 (leaving her roughly €13,000 in net debt), whereas by 2023 she had only €108 of debt remaining. Since her declared assets (around €64,500 in apartment value) stayed nearly unchanged, this implies she paid down over €92,000 of debt in four years – a sum notably large relative to a Seimas member’s salary (approximately €2,531 per month in 2017). No public information was provided to explain the sources of funds used for such an accelerated loan repayment.

According to official data, a rank-and-file Seimas member’s monthly base salary in 2017 was about €2,531 (before taxes), which reflects Šakalienė’s approximate pay as an MP at that time (excluding additional allowances).

In November 2025, a public opinion survey (conducted by “Baltijos tyrimai” for ELTA) showed that Šakalienė – who had recently left the defence minister post amid controversy – had one of the most negatively evaluated reputations among Lithuanian politicians at that time.

On 21 October 2025, Šakalienė announced she would resign from the post of Minister of National Defence, explaining that she no longer had the confidence of Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė or LSDP party leader Mindaugas Sinkevičius.

In October 2025, Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė announced that oversight of the defense industry would be removed from the Ministry of Defence, citing a loss of confidence in Šakalienė’s performance as minister.

On 16 September 2025, the Chief Official Ethics Commission (VTEK) announced it would not investigate Minister Šakalienė’s conduct regarding defense procurements involving her campaign donors, stating there was no evidence of any conflict of interest. The review found that she did not participate in Ministry tenders and none of the businesspeople who had funded her election campaign were involved in those procurements.

In 2024, a question arose over whether Šakalienė had failed to disclose her husband’s workplace in her public declaration. The Seimas Ethics and Procedures Commission determined that she did not violate any rules, since her spouse (Valdas Šakalys) works in an intelligence agency and by law such information can be kept confidential.

It came to light in 2025 that several figures from Lithuania’s defense industry had financially supported Šakalienė’s 2020 parliamentary campaign – donors whose companies later participated in Ministry of Defence contracts – leading to public questions about a potential conflict of interest (though the ethics commission found no wrongdoing).

On November 11, 2025, after a ministerial handover ceremony, Šakalienė publicly complained that while all previous defence ministers were allowed to bid farewell to the troops, she was not given that opportunity.

In June 2025, as Minister of National Defence, Šakalienė received a special “Išbandymas viešumu” (“Trial by Publicity”) award at the PR Impact Awards for her exceptional professionalism and responsibility in communicating during challenging situations.

On 6 December 2023, Šakalienė was honored at the American Chamber of Commerce in Lithuania’s annual Gala with an “Oscar for Outstanding Leadership” award for her decisive leadership in coordinating the rescue of U.S. soldiers in Pabradė.