Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The European Investment Bank led a EUR 318 million non-recourse project-financing package for AB Ignitis Grupė, signed 22 October 2025, to fund the design, construction and operation of the 314 MW Kelmė onshore wind farm in western Lithuania. The EIB provided EUR 100 million of the package, alongside EUR 98.5 million from Swedbank, EUR 79.5 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and EUR 40 million from the Nordic Investment Bank, against a total project cost of approximately EUR 550 million. The plant, comprising 44 Nordex N163/6.X turbines, became operational in June 2025 and is the largest wind farm in the Baltic states, supplying power equivalent to roughly 250,000 Lithuanian households.

On 18 October 2025 the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a package of amendments to the Defence and Security Industry Law (XIV-2647, originally adopted May 2024), the Law on Public Procurement in Security and Defence, the Law on Control of Weapons and Ammunition, and cross-cutting territorial-planning and construction laws. The central measure, proposed by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation (EIMIN), replaces the full construction-permit requirement for defence-production facilities with a notification-of-commencement procedure, compressing typical procurement-to-groundbreaking timelines from approximately 2–2.5 years to a few months. Complementary provisions reserve public-land investment plots for defence projects, enable defence-industry development outside designated military territories, and enshrine industrial cooperation as a procurement principle requiring foreign OEMs fulfilling Lithuanian defence contracts to source a defined share of obligations from Lithuanian-registered entities. The package directly enables inbound defence-industrial FDI from Rheinmetall (155 mm artillery-shell JV) and the Northrop Grumman / Nammo medium-calibre ammunition programme at the state-owned Giraitė Armament Factory.

The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania adopted Law No. XIV-2985 on 26 September 2024, amending the Law on the Protection of Objects of Importance to Ensuring National Security (NSU Act), registered in the Teisės aktų registras (TAR) on 3 October 2024 and entering into force on 18 October 2024. The amendments expand the list of strategically important economic activities subject to FDI screening by the Commission for the Coordination of Protection of Objects of Importance to National Security to include the issuance of electronic money, electronic money tokens, asset-referenced tokens, and the provision of crypto-asset services (CASPs) as defined under EU MiCA Regulation 2023/1114, aligning Lithuania's screening perimeter with the EU crypto-assets regulatory framework. The law also refines core definitional concepts — "persons acting in concert," "controlling person," and "manager of critical information infrastructure" — to tighten beneficial-ownership and control analysis under the regime.

The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding 36 entities under 41 entries to the Entity List, effective June 28, 2022. The entities — located across China, Lithuania, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, the UAE, the United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam — were designated for acting contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. Key grounds include support for China's military modernization and AI-enabled surveillance programs, Pakistan-based proliferation concerns, and supply-chain facilitation for Russia amid the Ukraine invasion. The rule also revised eleven existing entries (Belarus, China, Russia, Slovakia) and corrected one entry (Pakistan).