UK → LITHUANIA Moving to Lithuania: how customs works, and the documents to expect

The question this lane’s thread answers is what a fourth-floor flat with no lift costs. Van-side help comes with every move: the driver takes your goods into and out of the van as standard. Anything beyond the van side, four flights of stairs for instance, counts as additional crew, an add-on we arrange in advance, subject to availability. We price it from the floor and the volume, and we put it on the quote before you book. So, if the flat is on the fourth floor, say so when you ask for your price, and nothing changes on the day.

The enquiries we have had for Vilnius ask two things above all: how long the van takes, and whether a smaller load can go for less. Both have honest answers. For London to Vilnius, today’s guide price is £2,471 at 10 m³ and £5,566 at 30 m³, clearance included either way. Booking locks that price, against a 25% deposit. Storage, if the flat is not ready for you, is arranged separately and quoted on its own. The smaller sizes are the lower rungs of that ladder because they share the van, which is also why their range is the widest.

The road in from Poland is the land route into the Baltic states from the rest of the EU. From Warsaw the Polish S61 runs north past Suwałki to the border. The Lithuanian A5 then carries on through Marijampolė to Kaunas, with Vilnius an hour beyond. Together the S61 and the A5 are the Via Baltica, the E67, which keeps going north to Riga and Tallinn; Vilnius sits just east of it. We record 21.6 hours of driving for the lane, which fits three tachograph days, so every range opens on day 3. We count the loading day as day one, so that is two clear days after the van leaves your street.

The Channel ferry does not count against those hours, because our arithmetic treats a crossing as driver rest, exactly as the tachograph does. A full van, 20 or 30 m³, is quoted at 3–5 days. For the shared 5 and 10 m³ loads, allow until day 10. Logistics narrow that span as the run firms up, then send the exact time the day before loading, and the one WhatsApp thread you opened at booking carries it, read at the desk Mon to Sat, 8am to 10pm UK time and picked up the next morning if it arrives later.

With Lithuania inside the EU and the UK outside, your household counts as third-country goods. The clearance happens in France, at the start of the road east: French customs admits the personal property of someone transferring their permanent residence free of import duties and VAT. Personal property means items for personal use or household needs: bedding, furniture, equipment and the like, with cycles included. What the relief does not cover, under the EU rules, is alcohol and tobacco, vehicles used commercially, and the equipment of a trade.

The conditions are the EU’s, and French customs applies them. You must have had your normal home outside the EU for twelve consecutive months. Each item must have served you there for six months, and the goods must enter within twelve months of your settling, in one consignment or several. The authorities may make an exception where the twelve months abroad fell short but the intention to stay that long was clear. Part with any of it in the twelve months after clearance, by lending, pledging, hiring out or selling, and the relief on it goes, leaving the import duties to pay.

We run both declarations. The export leaves the UK with the van, then our customs partner lodges the import in France for you. Lithuanian Customs’ own page is written for people who claim the relief in Lithuania, and on this lane that claim does not fall to you. How the two stages work is on our transfer of residence page. We want the documents 7 days before the collection window, and the inventory 3 calendar days before it. The list you sign for us is the itemised inventory the declaration rests on.

A UK citizen who stays beyond the Schengen visa-free 90 days needs a residence permit, and the Migration Department has folded the address into that process. When you apply for a temporary residence permit through its MIGRIS system, you give your address on the application. You attach the lease, or the owner’s consent, that proves your right to live there. No separate declaration is needed in that case.

The alternative is a commitment on the application. Then, within one month of collecting the permit, you visit the eldership, the municipality’s local office, and declare the address there. The Department warns that administrative liability follows if you do not. The UK Government’s guidance is shorter: once you arrive, declare your residency.

Lithuania counts days. Once you have lived there for more than 185 days you must exchange your UK driving licence for a Lithuanian one. Nobody in Lithuania can renew or replace the UK card. Regitra, which issues the new one, then asks a question nobody expects: when did the UK issue your licence? A licence from before the UK left the EU goes through the exchange as it always did. A licence from after that date counts as a third-country licence. Its exchange comes with a theory test and a practical test, though not with driving school. Either way the application wants the licence and a Lithuanian translation of it.

For a car brought from the UK, Regitra has its own registration route for vehicles imported after the withdrawal. We carry households, not cars, so the car travels separately, and it is one more reason to settle the permit early: Regitra wants a resident, and residence is the address you declared through MIGRIS.

Lithuanian healthcare runs on compulsory health insurance, PSD, and the State Patient Fund administers it. The Fund covers a foreigner on a temporary residence permit once a Lithuanian employer takes them on and pays the contribution. Their children are covered with them. A permit on its own does not insure you. So a family arriving ahead of a job start needs private cover for the gap, and the Fund’s website shows whether the cover has begun.

Tax is tidier. The UK and Lithuania have a double taxation agreement, and the State Tax Inspectorate, VMI, answers questions on relief under it. The through-line for settling in is the one we keep returning to: the permit, the lease and the employment contract. The Migration Department reads them for the address, and the Patient Fund for the insurance. So a copy of each in the folder that travels with you saves a month of chasing.

Lithuania requires winter tyres from 10 November to the end of March on cars and light vans, earlier than its Baltic neighbours. The vehicles that serve this lane drive under that rule. A December delivery to Kaunas or Klaipėda is therefore a normal job, and the range allows for winter already, since it rests on driving hours rather than speed.

These dates matter most for a collection. The Day of the Restoration of the State is 16 February and the Day of the Restoration of Independence is 11 March, both public holidays. St John’s Day, Joninės, is 24 June, and the country spends it in the countryside. All Souls’ Day on 2 November is a holiday too, and Christmas runs from 24 to 26 December. Choose a window that lands in Vilnius on one of them and we will tell you before you confirm; our festive closure is already off the calendar. Whatever the season, goods-in-transit cover stands between loading and arrival, up to £20,275 per event, with an excess and exclusions all printed before you book.