Poręba recalled that, at the request of the representative of the Lithuanian government, draconian penalties were imposed for the use of information boards on private buildings in Polish language. He also noticed that it is not permitted to use bilingual names in Lithuania. The Seimas have not adopted the Law on National Minorities although national minorities make up 16% of the population of this country.

'Poles in Vilnius region make up over 60% of the population and in the region of Šalčininkai - about 80%. In spite of that, there are effort made to weed out the Polish language from the Lithuanian public space,' said Poręba. 'Therefore Lithuania continues on breaking the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which the country has ratified, and also ignores the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages despite the fact that the European Parliament called all member states to ratify the Charter at the beginning of the Lithuanian Presidency in a resolution,' the MEP from PiS added.

Poręba pointed out a clear asymmetry in the treatment of the Polish minority in Lithuania and the Lithuanian minority in Poland. The MEP from Law and Justice had stressed that the Lithuanians in Poland enjoy the entirety of rights and 'freely operate in the public space'. 'I appeal to Mrs President to stop this obvious discrimination of Poles in Lithuania; it totally unnecessarily destroys the image of this beautiful country in Europe,' appealed Poręba.

K. Ochman, ECR Group Press Officer, European Parliament