Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania has allowed bilingual information signs in the EU languages

In a recent case handled by COBALT lawyers, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania issued a significant clarification regarding the use of Lithuanian and Polish language information signs in the city of Šalčininkai.

The State Language Inspectorate (SLI) has ordered the Director of the Šalčininkai City Municipality Administration to remove public signs (dual-language signs) in Polish and to leave them in the national language only, on the grounds that public signs must be published in the national language only. By this order, the SLI failed to fulfil its obligation to assess the situation individually, and by such actions failed to ensure an objective assessment of all the relevant circumstances in accordance with the systematically applicable Law on the National Language of the Republic of Lithuania, the Law of the Republic of Lithuania “On the Implementation of the Law on the National Language of the Republic of Lithuania“, the Law on the State Language Commission of the Republic of Lithuania and the subordinate legal acts implementing them, such as the Resolution No N-5(136) of the State Lithuanian Language Commission of 8 November 2012 “On the provision of public information in a language other than the national language” (Resolution), the SLI order was also inconsistent with the situation in Vilnius, where analogous public signs (topographical indications) are provided in both Lithuanian and English languages.

On 18 December, the extended chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania clarified that, in this context, the signs must be regarded as written information relevant to international transport matters, including communication for tourism purposes, within the meaning of point 1 of the Resolution, and they comply with the requirements for such foreign-language signs set out in point 2 of the said Resolution. Similar directional signs in Vilnius, where, in addition to the official Lithuanian language, signs referring to certain objects are also provided in English, and legislative initiatives such as, The content of the draft Constitutional Law on the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania reflects and confirms the tendencies (need) existing in the society to provide, in certain cases, for the purposes of international communication, information in foreign languages in addition to the information in the Lithuanian national language, such as in the specific case under consideration in the present case – in one of the other EU official languages.

In this case, the Director of the Šalčininkai city Municipality Administration was represented by COBALT Partner Professor Dr Rimantas Simaitis, Associate Partner Dr Milda Markevičiūtė, and Associate Martynas Dovydauskis.