On 1 July the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) agreed amendments to the law on the legal status of aliens that would allow irregular migrants to become (self)-employed as soon as their movement restrictions cease to apply – specifically, 12 months after they have been registered in the migration information system. Seimas also granted these migrants access to labour market insertion programmes run by the national employment service, municipalities, international and non-governmental organisations.

These new amendments will affect the detention procedures that came into force in July 2021 (extended in December 2021) after several thousands of irregular migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, crossed into Lithuania from Belarus. Vilnius accused Minsk of orchestrating migrant smuggling as a means of political pressure, calling it "hybrid attack", and Lithuania subsequently adopted policies of detaining irregular migrants for up to a year and pushing back those attempting to cross the border.

Earlier this week, the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld the claim that Lithuania’s migrant policies are in violation of EU law. According to the court‘s judgement, amendments to national laws that prevent irregular migrants from applying for asylum and automatically place them in detention are contradictory to European directives.

The ruling was welcomed by Nils Mužnieks, Amnesty International's head of Europe, who said that it "details the authorities’ flagrant violation of European and international law". Amnesty recently published a report documenting dire conditions in Lithuania’s migration centres as well as allegations of racism and violent pushbacks across the Lithuanian-Belarus border. Lithuania‘s Minister of the Interior, though, said that the country must "defend itself" and will not back down from its policies on migrants and asylum seekers.