Minister says only parliament can remove Matjošaitytė

Justice Minister Rita Tamašunienė said Laura Matjošaitytė’s conduct should be assessed only after institutions complete their investigations, while only the Lithuanian parliament can remove her from the Central Electoral Commission, LRT reported, citing BNS.

“Under the Electoral Code, the justice minister has no possibility of removing a delegated member because she was appointed by parliament in a secret ballot,” Tamašunienė told BNS on Monday.

She said any assessment of Matjošaitytė’s conduct and her prospects of continuing in the role should be based on established facts. The Chief Official Ethics Commission is collecting additional information to decide whether to open an investigation into Matjošaitytė, while the Central Electoral Commission is due to decide on Thursday whether to begin its own investigation.

Central Electoral Commission chair Lina Petronienė said the commission could not investigate one of its own members. Instead, it would examine whether the Nemunas Aušra party had breached the law by accepting Matjošaitytė’s services without declaring them.

Tamašunienė said the activities of the commission and its members must not raise doubts about the institution’s transparency and impartiality. She added that Matjošaitytė could also resign voluntarily.

“I do not know how convinced she is of her position or how all those processes took place, but I think her conduct will probably also be determined by the institutions’ decisions,” the minister said.

She added that officials could call on Matjošaitytė to resign if violations were established.

Matjošaitytė was appointed to the Central Electoral Commission by parliament in 2025 on the recommendation of then Justice Minister Rimantas Mockus, who had been delegated by Nemunas Aušra.

For several weeks, media outlets and institutions have been examining the scope of Matjošaitytė’s cooperation with Nemunas Aušra before the 2024 parliamentary election.

The Delfi news portal reported on Monday that Matjošaitytė, then working as a lawyer, advised Nemunas Aušra in 2024 and sought from the outset to conceal her role. According to the portal, in September 2024, slightly more than a month before the parliamentary election, she emailed the party’s deputy chair, Robertas Puchovičius, a draft response to the Central Electoral Commission about the sources of the party’s funding and asked him to conceal the document’s true authorship.

Neither the party nor Matjošaitytė declared their previous cooperation. After initially refusing to say whether she had been paid, Matjošaitytė later said she had received no money. She has declined to comment on the details of her professional relationship with Nemunas Aušra, citing lawyer client confidentiality.

In May 2025, the newly formed Central Electoral Commission considered alleged violations in Nemunas Aušra’s political campaign financing. Matjošaitytė voted that the party had committed violations in some cases and abstained in others. She said the votes did not create a conflict of interest or grounds for her recusal because she no longer provided consultations to political organisations after returning to work at the commission.