Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen (born 6 August 1983) is a Lithuanian politician and chess Grandmaster who is currently the speaker of the Seimas. Awarded the title Grandmaster by FIDE in 2010, she was European women's champion in 2011, and is a two-time Lithuanian champion.
Čmilytė-Nielsen began her career in politics in 2015, when she was selected to replace Remigijus Šimašius in the Seimas for the Liberal Movement, and later was reelected in the 2016 parliamentary election. She began to gradually rise in the ranks of the Liberal Movement, becoming the Seimas opposition leader in 2019, and being elected chairperson of the Liberal Movement later that year. She led the party into the 2020 parliamentary election, where they won 13 seats.
Early life and education
Viktorija Čmilytė was born in Šiauliai.[1] She began playing chess at age six, and was coached by her father Viktor Ivanovič Čmil (Viktoras Čmilis), a KGB active reserve officer of Russian ethnicity and the head of the Šiauliai Chess Club.[2][3][4] After graduating, Čmilytė moved to Riga to enroll in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Latvia. She graduated with a degree in English philology in 2007.[5][6]
Čmilytė competed in the Women's World Chess Championship for the first time in 2000, when she reached the third round. In 2004 she was defeated in the quarterfinals by former Women's World Champion Maia Chiburdanidze. In 2006, Čmilytė reached the semifinals and lost to the eventual runner-up, Alisa Galliamova. In 2008 and 2010 she was eliminated in the second round, while in 2010 and 2015 she went out in round three.
Team competitions
Čmilytė has played for the Lithuanian team in the 2010 Chess Olympiad (Open Section) and on other occasions participated in the Women's Chess Olympiads, where she won two individual gold medals on board one, the first at Istanbul in 2000 (9½/12) and the second at Calvià in 2004 (8½/11). She earned a place in the team for the first time when she was thirteen (in Yerevan, 1996) and was first board at fifteen (Elista, 1998), contributing a plus score each time.[15]
In the Frauenbundesliga (Women's Bundesliga) in Germany, she is a team member of OSC Baden Baden, but has also played some league chess in Sweden.
A year afterwards, Čmilytė-Nielsen was selected to stand in the 2016 parliamentary election with the Liberal Movement, as a candidate on their nationwide party list. She ultimately was elected to parliament, and subsequently began to serve on the European affairs committee and human rights committee. During this term in parliament, Čmilytė-Nielsen began to amass more influence and prestige within the party, serving as deputy chair of the Liberal Movement parliamentary group in 2017 and 2018, and later serving as the parliamentary group's chair since 2018.[5] In 2019, she was selected to serve as the Seimas opposition leader, becoming the spokesperson and leader of the parliamentary groups opposed to the incumbent Skvernelis government.[17] She later resigned as opposition leader and was replaced by Julius Sabatauskas, but was later elected to serve as chairperson of the Liberal Movement in September 2019.[18][19]
As party chair, Čmilytė-Nielsen was tasked with leading the Liberal Movement into the 2020 parliamentary election, where the party won 13 seats. Following the certification of election results, it emerged that a coalition would likely be formed between the Liberal Movement, Freedom Party, and election winners Homeland Union.[20][21] Proposing Ingrida Šimonytė as their prime ministerial candidate, Čmilytė-Nielsen is expected to be one of the three main leaders of the incoming government, in addition to Šimonytė and Freedom Party leader Aušrinė Armonaitė, following in the footsteps of the Marin Cabinet in Finland for having a woman-led government.[22][23] On 9 November, the coalition agreement was signed between the Homeland Union, Liberal Movement, and Freedom Party.[24]
On 12 November, Čmilytė-Nielsen was nominated to serve as speaker of the Seimas, and was expected to be succeeded as Liberal Movement parliamentary leader by Eugenijus Gentvilas.[25] She later was elected as speaker the following day, receiving 106 votes, becoming the third woman to serve in the position.[26]
Čmilytė married Latvian-Spanish chess player grandmasterAlexei Shirov in 2001, until divorcing in 2007. In 2013 she married Danish chess player grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen. She has four children.[5]
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