The EU’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that same-sex marriages must be respected throughout the bloc and rebuked Poland for refusing to recognize a marriage between two of its citizens that took place in Germany.
The court said Poland had been wrong in not recognizing the marriage of the couple when they moved back to Poland, on the grounds that Polish law does not allow marriage between people of the same sex.
“It infringes not only the freedom to move and reside, but also the fundamental right to respect for private and family life,” the court said.
Freedom to have ‘normal family life’
In predominantly Catholic Poland, the struggle for LGBT equality for years was branded by those in power as a dangerous foreign ideology. However, the current government has been working on a bill to regulate civil partnerships, including same-sex unions.
The EU Court of Justice made the binding ruling at the request of a Polish court handling the case of the men who had contested the refusal to transcribe their German marriage certificate in the Polish registry. The couple, who wed in Berlin in 2018, have been identified only by their initials in the case.
“This ruling is historic,” said Pawel Knut, the lawyer representing the couple. “It marks a new beginning in the fight for equality and equal treatment for same-sex couples.”
He said that Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court would now have to decide whether to perform the transcription or not, but that he believed Tuesday’s ruling was binding upon it. EU citizens have the freedom to move to other member states and to have “a normal family life” there and upon return to their country of origin, the court said.
“When they create a family life in a host member state, in particular by virtue of marriage, they must have the certainty to be able to pursue that family life upon returning to their member state of origin.”
The court said this did not require member states to allow marriage between people of the same sex in their national laws. But they are not allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples in the way they recognize foreign marriages, it added.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European coalition government’s work on pushing through the bill on same-sex unions has been held back by resistance from his conservative coalition partner. Poland’s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki has also said he would veto “any bill that would undermine the constitutionally protected status of marriage.”
