The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Poland must provide legal recognition and protection for same-sex unions to meet the country’s obligation as a European Union member to ensure equal rights for all couples.
Issuing the verdict on April 24, the ECHR noted that the absence of legal recognition of same sex couples who married abroad was a denial of individual rights. It added Poland was obliged to legislate for those rights to be respected.
The case brought before the ECHR referred to a single-sex marriage in the UK involving individuals who were living in Poland. One of them was a Polish citizen who brought the case alleging discrimination against his rights by the Polish State.
It was not the first verdict the ECHR had issued on the rights of same-sex couples. In 2023, the court ruled that Poland’s failure to recognise same-sex unions violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That protects the right to private and family life, and the court urged Poland to introduce legislative changes to provide legal recognition and protection for same-sex couples.
The Polish Government’s women’s rights minister Katarzyna Kotula reacted to the latest ECHR judgment, saying: “The ruling by the ECHR underlined the urgency of agreeing legislation on civil partnerships.”
A bill, which the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) and the Left parties have proposed, would allow those entering into same-sex unions or other forms of civil partnerships to be able to share a surname, be taxed as a couple, have access to each other’s medical records, inherit goods and be authorised to arrange funerals.
The centre-right Polish People’s party (PSL) has remained sceptical, though, and without its votes the legislation does not have a realistic chance of being approved.
The bill is opposed by the opposition Conservative (PiS) and Confederation parties, which have pointed to the fact that the Polish Constitution defines marriage as being exclusively a union of man and woman. They add that Poland became a member of the EU on the basis of its existing Constitution.
Former PiS deputy justice minister Michał Woś MP told Brussels Signal that “marriage as a union of man and woman is the constitutional norm in Poland”.
He added that the ECHR court judgment was in line with the “attempt by European elites to make Poland accept ideologies which are alien to our nation and which are increasingly being rejected in the United States”.
LGBT rights have been a hot-button issue in Polish politics over the past decade with the last PiS government refusing any move towards civil partnerships.
Some local PiS-controlled councils passed resolutions supporting a family charter that blocked any LGBT education in schools in order to combat “LGBT ideology”. That was mistakenly labelled by opponents as declaring “LGBT-free zones”.
Nevertheless, the term “LGBT-free zones” later appeared in documents issued by the European Commission and the European Parliament, which criticised Poland for its record on LGBT rights.
The “offending” resolutions have gradually been withdrawn in the localities that passed them because the commission has refused to release EU funds designated for these localities and because of rulings by Polish courts that the local authorities had exceeded their powers by adopting such measures.
In June 2022, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) ruled that the effect of the resolutions was the “violation of the dignity, honour, good name and private lives of a specific group of residents”.
The last locality to rescind such a resolution, the south-eastern town of Łańcut, did so on April 24.
