Court rejects language inspectorate appeal over bilingual signs

Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court has effectively rejected the State Language Inspectorate’s appeal over bilingual village-name signs in Vilnius district, LRT reported on Wednesday.

The court changed the first-instance ruling only in relation to legal costs. It cancelled an order requiring the inspectorate to pay Vilnius District Municipality 12,346 euros, while leaving the rest of the decision unchanged.

The ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

The dispute began in May 2023, when the inspectorate ordered Vilnius District Municipality to ensure that public signs displaying the names of the villages of Bieliškės and Ažulaukė used only the official state language by July 1 that year.

The signs are bilingual, displaying the village names in Lithuanian and Polish. The inspectorate considered them public notices and said the Polish inscriptions “w. Bieliszki” and “Orzełówka” did not comply with the Law on the State Language.

Vilnius District Mayor Robert Duchnevičius appealed the order to the Lithuanian Administrative Disputes Commission, which annulled it. The inspectorate then took the case to the Regional Administrative Court, which rejected its complaint in January 2025 and ordered it to reimburse the municipality’s legal costs.

After that ruling, Duchnevičius said he wanted to show that treating decorative signs as road signs did not comply with legal regulations. He also said parliament should address gaps in the law, which currently creates uncertainty over informational signs.

The mayor said similar decorative signs in Vilnius had not caused problems and urged the inspectorate not to continue the proceedings because of the additional legal costs.