Ingrida Šimonytė

Ingrida Šimonytė (Lithuanian: [ɪŋʲɡʲrʲɪˈdˠɐ ʃʲɪmˠoːˈnʲîːtʲeː]; born 15 November 1974) is a Lithuanian politician, public servant and economist who served as the 17th prime minister of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024. She has been a Member of the Seimas for the Antakalnis constituency since 2016 and was Minister of Finance in the second Kubilius cabinet from 2009 until 2012. Šimonytė was a candidate in the 2019 and 2024 presidential election, but lost in the second round runoff to Gitanas Nausėda both times. She has been a member of Homeland Union since 2022, having previously been an independent politician.

Born in Vilnius, Šimonytė graduated from Vilnius University with a degree in business in 1996, later receiving a master's degree in 1998. She began her career as an economist and public servant, working as chief of the tax division within the Ministry of Finance until 2004. She remained in the tax division until being nominated to serve as finance minister in 2009, tasked with stimulating the Lithuanian economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. She resigned from the position in 2012, and was appointed deputy chairperson of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, and chairperson of Vilnius University Council, a professor of economics at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science, and of public finance at ISM University of Management and Economics.

Šimonytė returned to politics in 2016, when she ran as an independent candidate in the 2016 parliamentary election to represent Antakalnis constituency in Vilnius, ultimately winning a seat in parliament. In 2018, Šimonytė announced her campaign in the 2019 presidential election; she won the nomination of the Homeland Union. She narrowly won the first round of the election on 12 May 2019, before placing 33 percentage points behind fellow independent Gitanas Nausėda in the runoff on 26 May.

She was reelected to Parliament in the 2020 parliamentary election, where the Homeland Union won a plurality of seats. Following the certification of the election results, Šimonytė was proposed as the prime ministerial candidate by a coalition consisting of the Homeland Union, Liberal Movement and Freedom Party; she took office on 11 December, along with the appointment of her cabinet. In October 2023, Šimonytė announced that she would once again run for president in the 2024 presidential election. She made it to the runoff but lost again to Nausėda in a landslide receiving 24% of the vote against Nausėda's 76%. She left as prime minister after her party lost to the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania in the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary election in October.