Seimas speaker sees efforts to stall decisions on non-Lithuanian names in passports

“Yes, there are some efforts to procrastinate the procedure. I expected this to be settled much earlier, however, this has not been finalized for more than two decades,” he told the Polish-language radio Znad Wilii.

In his words, the parliament is currently readying to announce a tender for expert conclusions of the amendments currently that are being discussed. Pranckietis said the parliament’s Committee for Legal Affairs refused to draw the conditions for the tender, therefore, the task was assigned to the Committee for Education and Science.

The parliamentary speaker said there was also political will to allow non-Lithuanian characters in first and last names in passports, noting that the issue would probably be moved to the spring session due to the need to adopt the 2018 budget.

Lithuania’s parliament has been in discussions on name spelling for decades. Some politicians allow Latin characters on the main page of personal identification documents to ensure a person’s right to his name, while others say this would undermine the status of the official Lithuanian language, proposing that first and last names could be spelled in non-Lithuanian characters on the second page of passports.

Poles living in Lithuania and their supporters in Warsaw want the original spelling of names. The spelling is also important for Lithuanian females married to foreigners and their children.