Prior to his entry into politics as economic advisor to then-PM Algirdas Butkevičius Jakeliūnas was economist at Vilniaus taupomoji kasa, a credit union that became insolvent 3 years later;[2] he mentioned it was “to be expected”.
[5] In September 2020 Jakeliūnas abstained in the parliamentary vote on support for the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, attracting criticism from prime minister Saulius Skvernelis of the Farmers and Greens Union.
[16] In September 2024 Jakeliūnas accused the European Parliament for auditing his expenses 3 times in a single 5-year term as form of political retribution; he drew analogy between his case and that of Viktoras Uspaskich.
[18] Having announced he will not run for another term at the European Parliament in November 2023 after losing support[19] of the LFGU, he changed his mind and ran in 2024 for the Party of the Regions, which received 5.25% of the votes and no seats.
[20] Jakeliūnas planned[21] to participate in the October 2024 elections to the Seimas on the Labour Party list led by the Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich who in 2021 was expelled[22] from the Renew Europe group at the EP for calling LGBT people “perverts” who “must not be tolerated”.
[30] In February 2024 Jakeliūnas asked police to investigate Algis Ramanauskas, a media personality, for alleged hate speech against people holding views favoring life in the pre-1990 Soviet Lithuania.