Vytenis Andriukaitis

European Commissioner for Health

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis is a Lithuanian physician, politician, and signatory of the 1990 Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. He was born on August 9, 1951 in Yakut, former USSR. V. P. Andriukaitis’s family was deported to Siberia in June 1941. He, his mother, and his two older brothers were allowed to return in 1958; his father returned in 1959. He enrolled in medical school in Kaunas, graduating in 1975. Since 1969 he was an active participant in the anti-Soviet underground and studied in the underground Antanas Strazdelis humanitarian thought and self- education University. V. P. Andriukaitis entered politics in 1976 as a Social Democrat, going on to receive a degree in history from Vilnius University in 1984.

He was elected to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania in 1990. Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis was one of the authors of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania adopted in 1992. He served in Seimas from 1992 to 2004, and was its deputy chairman of its board from 2001 to 2004. During the period of 2008 – 2012 V. P. Andriukaitis became the deputy chairman of Lithuanian Parliament of the Republic Committee on European Affairs, the member of Foreign Affairs Committee and Vice-Chairman LSDP, the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania. V.P. Andriukaitis is a member of Seimas and is the former Minister of Health of the Republic of Lithuania. In 2014 he was elected as European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety.