State Language Inspectorate Ultimately Loses Court Battle Over Bilingual Signs in Vilnius District

Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court (LVAT) on Wednesday essentially rejected the appeal filed by the State Language Inspectorate (VKI) concerning bilingual place-name signs in the Vilnius District.

“LVAT largely rejected the appellant’s appeal – that is, the State Language Inspectorate’s – and the first-instance court’s ruling was amended only with regard to court costs,” court spokesman Paulius Žeimys told the BNS agency on Wednesday.

“The appeal, filed by the State Language Inspectorate, is to be partially upheld. The ruling of the Regional Administrative Court of 27 January 2025 is to be amended. The part of the Regional Administrative Court’s ruling ordering the State Language Inspectorate to reimburse the Vilnius District municipal administration court costs in the amount of €12,346 is to be overturned. In all other respects, the Regional Administrative Court’s ruling is to remain unchanged,” the LVAT ruling states.

This ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

The dispute between the VKI and Vilnius District Mayor Robert Duchniewicz broke out in May 2023, when the Inspectorate ordered that by 1 July 2023 the public signs bearing the names of the villages of Bieliszki (Bieliškės) and Orzełówka (Ažulaukė), located in the Vilnius District, be produced solely in the state language.

The signs marking these villages are bilingual –  the names are written in both Lithuanian and Polish. In the State Language Inspectorate’s assessment, these are public inscriptions, and therefore the Polish-language additions “w. Bieliszki” and “Orzełówka” do not meet the requirements of the Law on the State Language.

The district mayor appealed the Inspectorate’s order to the Lithuanian Administrative Disputes Commission. The Commission upheld the mayor’s complaint and overturned the VKI’s order.

The State Language Inspectorate then took the case to the Regional Administrative Court. In January 2025, however, that court rejected the Inspectorate’s complaint regarding the Polish-language inscriptions. Moreover, the court of first instance ordered the Inspectorate to reimburse the Vilnius District over €12,000 in court costs.

Following that ruling, the dispute moved to Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court.

After the court of first instance issued its ruling, Mayor Robert Duchniewicz explained that he wanted to prove that “treating decorative signs as road signs is clearly unlawful.” According to the mayor, the Seimas should fill the gaps in the legislation, since there is currently a great deal of ambiguity surrounding informational signs.

“This order from the Inspectorate struck me as downright ridiculous. (…) I believe the court’s ruling is correct. At the time, I appealed for this process not to be continued, because litigation costs money. In my view, the higher court would rule in a similar vein,” Duchniewicz said earlier. He also pointed out that decorative signs of this kind can also be found in Vilnius, where “they bother no one.”

Vilnius District Mayor commented on Wednesday’s final LVAT ruling on social media:

“So, after more than three years, we can now say clearly: the bilingual, decorative village-name signs will stay. A very simple question now arises: why appeal the rulings and spend three years wasting state institutions’ time and taxpayers’ money over signs that are not official markers, but serve merely a decorative function in two villages?” R. Duchniewicz wrote.