Most contracts are negotiated on price, volume and delivery dates. The dispute resolution clause, usually second from last, usually lifted from the previous deal, gets read properly only once something has gone wrong. By then it has decided which country’s courts will hear the claim, how long enforcement will take and, sometimes, whether a judgment can be enforced at all. Two developments of the past two years make that paragraph worth revisiting for anyone trading with the Baltics: one made cross-border enforcement easier, the other added a step that can stop it.
The enforcement rules changed in July 2025
For British companies, the practical picture improved on 1 July 2025, when the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention entered into force in the United Kingdom. The same convention has applied in EU member states other than Denmark, Lithuania included, since 1 September 2023. Within its scope, a judgment obtained in London can now be recognised in Vilnius, and the reverse, without the merits being reopened.
Two limits matter more than the headline. The convention only reaches proceedings started after it began to link the two countries. For UK–Lithuania claims, that means cases commenced on or after 1 July 2025; anything older falls back on slower national rules. It also says nothing about which court has jurisdiction in the first place, so a loosely drafted clause can still land you in a forum you did not intend.
Sanctions now come up before enforcement does
The second development is less publicised and catches companies by surprise. Lithuanian courts examine the sanctions position of the parties before enforcing anything. In a June 2024 ruling, the Court of Appeal of Lithuania set out what that check involves. A court assesses whether sanctions apply to the applicant, and whether the applicant is owned or controlled by persons on EU sanctions lists. The test is not simply whether a name appears on a list – control can sit several layers up an ownership chain that the contract itself never mentions.
The same logic reaches performance, not only enforcement. In May 2025, the Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal of a damages claim against a company whose funds had been frozen. The freezing decision, the court held, required performance of its obligations to be suspended for as long as the restrictions lasted. Russian and Belarusian court judgments have also been refused recognition on public policy grounds connected to sanctions, though that line of practice is not yet settled.
For the company on the other side of such a counterparty, the assessment turns on Lithuanian case law rather than on the wording the parties agreed, which is why commercial dispute resolution lawyers in Lithuania are increasingly asked to map a counterparty’s structure before enforcement papers are filed, rather than after a court has refused them. Motieka & Audzevičius, whose disputes practice covers sanctions-related and investor-state proceedings, is among the firms handling this work in the Lithuanian market.
Time limits are shorter than most companies assume
Lithuanian law sets a general limitation period of ten years, and the exceptions are what matter commercially. Claims for compensation of damage must be brought within three years. Since the start of 2022, claims about defective goods, services or digital content run for two years, and contractual penalties and default interest for six months. Companies that spend a year exchanging increasingly formal emails with a supplier sometimes find the shorter period expired somewhere in the correspondence.
Timing also determines whether anything remains to be recovered. Interim measures — freezing accounts or property — can be sought even before a claim is filed. The court then sets a short deadline to bring it: fourteen days, or thirty where the claim is going to a foreign court or arbitral tribunal. Preserving delivery records, correspondence, and the chain of who approved what costs almost nothing at the first missed payment but becomes expensive to reconstruct two years later.
None of this argues for treating every contract as a future lawsuit. It argues for reading one paragraph as what it is: an allocation of risk, priced cheaply at signature or expensively in court. Test it against a single scenario before signing, and the clause stops being boilerplate.
