General profile Digital profile

Lithuania

Digital Snapshot – Key Policies and Laws

Lithuania’s digital governance is strongly shaped by the EU frameworks and coordinated through national planning documents, including the National Digital Decade Roadmap and the broader state digitalisation programme context referenced in the Commission’s country reporting. The European Commission’s Digital Decade country reporting notes that Lithuania performs consistently well on digital public services, while still needing continued effort on some targets (e.g. skills and connectivity).

Regarding AI policy, Lithuania has a national AI strategy, ‘A Vision of the Future‘, and is building an AI regulatory sandbox through the Innovation Agency to support testing and compliance. In cloud/public-sector IT, the State Digital Solutions Agency (VSSA) has announced plans to use public cloud services for state information resources in line with national management rules.

On networks, Lithuania pairs domestic rollout with EU-linked connectivity targets. It has an official Ultra-fast Broadband Development Plan 2021–2027. For mobile, the government adopted ‘Guidelines for the Development of 5G in Lithuania 2020–2025‘.

Lithuania’s internet infrastructure includes multiple peering points and a small number of critical international routes. Internet Society Pulse reports 4 active IXPs in Lithuania, with member networks concentrated in Vilnius, supporting resilience and keeping local traffic local. The country is also connected via a Baltic Sea submarine fibre cable. In November 2024, Telia reported damage to the undersea cable between Lithuania and Sweden, with traffic rerouted to restore service.

Critical Infrastructure management lesson

Lithuania–Sweden submarine cable damage: In mid-November 2024, Lithuania’s telecom operator Telia Lietuva reported that the undersea fibre-optic cable linking Lithuania and Sweden had been damaged (‘cut’), temporarily reducing Lithuania’s international internet capacity by about one-third. The incident did not result in a prolonged nationwide outage because traffic was rerouted to alternative paths, illustrating that regional connectivity planning relies on redundancy as much as on any single cable. Swedish and Lithuanian defence ministers publicly framed the damage as a critical-infrastructure concern and noted that authorities were pursuing a thorough investigation, reflecting the wider Baltic pattern of heightened attention to undersea assets after multiple cable incidents in the region.

For online platform governance and e-commerce intermediaries, Lithuania follows the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) model, with national enforcement organised around a designated coordinator. Namely, the Communications Regulatory Authority (RRT/CRA) publicly described its role in becoming the national coordinator for DSA implementation. In consumer-facing e-commerce, the State Consumer Rights Protection Authority (VVTAT) is the core national body for consumer protection and complaints handling.

Cybersecurity is anchored in a national strategy plus a detailed statutory framework. Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Strategy, approved by Government Resolution No. 818, sets objectives across public and private sectors. The Law on Cyber Security establishes institutions, powers, and duties for cyber policy and incident management.

On data and emerging tech, Lithuania applies GDPR with national ‘top-up’ rules and a dual-supervision model: the State Data Protection Inspectorate (VDAI) is the leading authority, with the Office of the Inspector of Journalist Ethics supervising specific expression-related contexts; VDAI explains this split in its own reporting.

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Lithuania’s permanent mission to the UN:

Lithuania’s Permanent Mission in Geneva represents and defends Lithuania’s interests at the UN Office at Geneva and other international organisations, supports Lithuania’s participation in multilateral diplomacy, and serves as a reporting and coordination link between Geneva-based bodies and Lithuanian institutions. The Mission’s mandate also covers cooperation with Geneva organisations across areas such as human rights, migration and humanitarian issues, trade, and disarmament-related work, and it includes Lithuania’s representation to the World Trade Organisation within the Mission’s staffing structure.

Official UN website: https://www.ungeneva.org/en/blue-book/missions/member-states/lithuania

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