The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a complaint filed against Lithuania by Kristina Brazauskienė, the widow of the country’s former President Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas, over denying her an annuity and a state residence.
Brazauskienė married Brazauskas after he finished his presidential term in 1998. She argued that, as a president’s widow, she was still entitled to a state pension and a government-provided residence. Being denied them was discrimination against her, Brazauskienė argued in her case.
The ECHR, however, pointed out that Brazauskienė was provided another social payout, a signatory’s widow’s pension, in 2020 (paid retroactively, to cover the period since she became a widow). Brazauskas, who died in 2010, had been a member of the Supreme Council which passed and signed Lithuania’s declaration of independence from the USSR in 1990.
The Strasbourg court also noted that, under Lithuanian law, two pensions cannot be paid for the same period.
As regards the refusal to grant Brazauskienė a state residence, the court stated that the house where she had lived with the former president and wished to stay for life was located in a protected area and that she was not entitled to state protection.
Moreover, in 2015, she was offered other accommodation under a lease agreement, which she refused.
In her complaint, Brazauskienė pointed out that another former president, Valdas Adamkus, had been granted a residence for life. This, she argued, was evidence of discrimination against her.
The ECHR, however, ruled that Brazauskienė’s status was different from that of Adamkus.
In 2017, the Lithuanian Constitutional Court also declared a law that gave a president's surviving spouse the right to free housing unconstitutional.
Lithuania’s first directly elected post-independence president, Brazauskas died on June 26, 2010, after a serious illness. He served as president between 1993 and 1998.
He married Brazauskienė in 2002.
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