KEY RESULTS OF THE INSTITUTION’S 2025 ACTIVITIES PRESENTED AT THE SEIMAS COMMITTEE ON ECONOMICS AND INNOVATION

The Chairwoman of the Competition Council, Jolanta Ivanauskienė, presented the institution’s 2025 annual report at a meeting of the Seimas Committee on Economy and Innovation and answered questions from members of Parliament.

Ivanauskienė began her presentation by highlighting the Competition Council’s main performance indicator – the benefits created for consumers, which averaged EUR 21.3 million per year over the 2023–2025 period. In practical terms, this means that every euro allocated to the institution from the state budget generated an estimated EUR 6.3 in consumer benefits.

This figure does not include fines imposed by the institution for breaches of competition law. Last year, those fines totalled EUR 12.16 million, while an additional EUR 2.36 million related to infringements committed in previous years was paid into the state budget.

Jolanta Ivanauskienė also highlighted the educational and preventive work carried out by the Competition Council. During 2025, the institution’s experts prepared 13 educational resources, including guidelines and recommendations, and sent 84 preventive letters to businesses and public sector bodies encouraging them to assess the risk of competition law infringements and adjust their practices accordingly.

“One example that had a significant impact on the market was the revision of warranty servicing conditions at new car dealerships following monitoring carried out by our experts. The previous arrangements were not in line with competition rules. As a result, owners of new vehicles can now access maintenance and repair services not only at authorised dealership service centres, but also at independent repair shops offering more competitive prices,” the Chairwoman of the Competition Council said.

To make information on competition rules and their practical application more accessible, the Competition Council also launched an online training platform enabling representatives of both businesses and public institutions to deepen their knowledge of legal requirements and strengthen competition culture.

The meeting also covered merger control activities. Last year, the institution’s experts reviewed 31 mergers and approved 30 transactions, including two that were cleared subject to commitments to address identified competition concerns. Businesses received approval for 84% of transactions within an average of 21 working days. One transaction in the online media market was prohibited after the authority identified a negative impact on competition and consumers; the issue was ultimately resolved through the sale of the online news portal to another owner.

In 2025, four infringements of the Competition Council Law on Competition were identified: one prohibited agreement, one anti-competitive internal transaction, and two unnotified mergers. The Chairwoman provided more detail on a cartel involving groups of companies operating e-diary systems and digital content platforms, which chose to divide areas of activity among themselves instead of competing with one another. The companies admitted the infringement and are currently finalising payment of more than EUR 3.5 million in fines to the state budget. She also referred to another infringement identified last year, when an Estonian company acquired control of competing cinemas in Vilnius and Kaunas without obtaining approval from the Competition Council.

Jolanta Ivanauskienė also drew attention to amendments to the Law on Competition that came into force this year, under which fines are reduced by half after the first stage of proceedings. She stressed that, considering the violations identified by the Competition Council in 2025, the harmful impact of these amendments on consumer interests has become even more apparent. The Chairwoman also noted that the European Commission has raised concerns about the possible incompatibility of these amendments with European Union law and is awaiting responses from Lithuania on the matter.

The discussion later turned to questions raised by members of Parliament regarding the Competition Council’s ability to initiate merger investigations on its own initiative, as well as related assessments by the Constitutional Court of Lithuania. Participants also discussed opportunities to expand the institution’s activities and generate greater benefits for consumers if additional funding were to be allocated.

The short 2025 activity report is available in English, full version available in Lithuanian.