Lithuania’s language mandate for international schools faces Europe’s legal lens

(CN) — Teachers at an English-language international school in Lithuania may need to learn the national language, but Europe’s top court said Thursday they cannot be pushed out by a certification rule so rigid it shuts qualified educators out of the classroom.

That was the core of the ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Protecting Lithuanian as the state language is a legitimate aim, the judges said, and requiring an intermediate level for teachers and certain staff can be justified in principle.

The flaw lay in how Lithuania enforced it. By allowing proof of proficiency only through a specific state-issued certificate, the system narrowed the path for educators trained elsewhere in the EU and risked making it harder to recruit staff from abroad.

“The fact that it is impossible for a candidate for a post in a private educational institution to prove that he or she meets the language requirement other than by obtaining a certificate, such as that required under the Lithuanian legislation, appears to go beyond what is necessary,” the court said.

The dispute traces back to an inspection at Vilnius International School, a private institution in the capital that has operated since 2004. The school teaches in English and follows globally recognized tracks: International Baccalaureate programs and Cambridge courses that prepare students for British-style international exams.

Although founded by a Lithuanian national, the school is partly owned by Finnish and Danish investors, placing it within European Union rules that protect the right to set up and run a business across borders.

In 2022, Lithuania’s State Language Inspectorate ordered the school to have 18 staff members — including its director, deputy director, a student-support specialist and several teachers — pass a Lithuanian language exam at “category II” level. Under national rules, that corresponds to B1 on the common European language scale, an intermediate benchmark meaning someone can manage everyday conversations and routine workplace exchanges.

From there, the judges ran the case through the familiar EU checklist.

First, does the measure restrict fundamental freedom? Yes, the court said, because it may deter nationals of other member states from establishing and operating an educational institution in Lithuania.

Second, is there a legitimate reason for it? Again, yes, in principle. Protecting the official language is a recognized public interest under EU law, tied to national identity.

Third — and decisively — was the rule proportionate? Here, the judges saw a problem. The requirement was enforced in a rigid, one-size-fits-all way, applied from day one with no room to adjust to the role or recognize equivalent qualifications from elsewhere in the EU.

A more measured system, the court suggested, could allow language skills to be developed over time or calibrated to responsibilities. Flexibility, in short, matters.

The same logic carried over to EU rules on professional qualifications: Language skills may be required if genuinely necessary, but they must still respect the broader right to establish and operate across borders.

That proportionality question, scholars say, is where the case really turned.

Dagmar Schiek, a full professor of EU law and labour law at University College Dublin’s Sutherland School of Law, said the weakness in Lithuania’s approach was its refusal to take account of qualifications obtained in other Member States.

Proportionality, she said, requires a genuine balancing exercise, weighing the public interest in protecting the language against the burden placed on individuals exercising free movement rights.

But the debate does not stop at proportionality. The earlier step — whether the rule counted as a restriction in the first place — also matters.

Stefan Enchelmaier, a professor of European and comparative law at the University of Oxford, said the court’s restriction finding sits comfortably within long-standing case law. The real question, he noted, is not whether a rule makes economic activity less attractive in the abstract, but whether it places a heavier burden on those operating across borders than on those who stay at home.

In this case, he said, it is “straightforward” that educators from other EU countries will face more difficulty proving Lithuanian proficiency than Lithuanian nationals. The requirement may be neutral on its face, but in practice, it weighs more heavily on outsiders, an imbalance EU law treats as indirect discrimination unless it can be convincingly justified.

For the school at the center of the dispute, the ruling is more clarifying than disruptive. Rebecca Toth Juras, director of Vilnius International School, said the decision strikes a workable balance, recognizing Lithuania’s interest in protecting its language while requiring that rules be applied “in a fair and flexible way, without unnecessary rigidity.”

She said the judgment is unlikely to change daily operations. Exemptions for international programs are already in place, teachers are hired globally on fixed-term contracts, and front-facing staff continue to work in both English and Lithuanian.

The State Language Inspectorate, for its part, is staying quiet for now, saying it will wait for the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court to issue its final decision before commenting.

That is where the case moves next. The EU judges’ ruling is final on the meaning of EU law, so there is no appeal in Luxembourg. Instead, Lithuania’s top administrative court must now apply that interpretation to the facts and decide how the national rules measure up. The bigger principle is settled. What remains is whether Lithuania’s current certification system can pass the test the EU court has just set.

Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.