Polish court tells civil registry office to recognise same-sex marriage
Poland's Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) has overturned a ruling by a lower court and has obliged the Warsaw Civil Registry Office to enter into the Polish registry the certificate of a same-sex marriage concluded abroad.
NSA's Friday ruling originates from a case involving a Polish couple who married in Berlin in 2018. Upon returning to Poland, they asked the local civil registry to record their marriage certificate. The request was rejected by the Warsaw Administrative Court
as Polish national law does not allow same-sex marriage.
In this case, NSA referred a question for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in 2023.
On November 25, 2025, the top EU court found that a member state's refusal to recognise a marriage lawfully contracted between two EU citizens breaches EU law. While marriage legislation remains the competence of individual member states, the court said that they must still comply with EU rules guaranteeing citizens' freedom of movement, the right to reside in other member states and the ability to lead a normal family life there.
Polish law currently does not permit same-sex marriage and does not recognise such marriages contracted abroad. The CJEU ruling does not oblige Poland to change its law regarding same-sex marriage, but to acknowledge the status of marriages legally concluded in other EU countries.
The government’s commissioner for equality, Katarzyna Kotula, commented on NSA's ruling later on Friday. She said that the judgment, in conjunction with an earlier position of the CJEU, sets the direction for state action regarding the recognition of marriages concluded abroad by same-sex couples returning to Poland.
She argued, however, that this does not mean a change to constitutional provisions or the introduction of such marriages into domestic law.
"This is not a systemic change... it does not mean that we are introducing same-sex marriages into Polish law," she said during a press conference in Katowice, southern Poland.
She added that NSA had obliged the civil registry office to act within a specified time frame, indicating 30 days to transcribe the marriage certificate after the return of documents. As she explained, transcription is the only technical means of recognising such a marriage in Poland.
She announced that the government would take steps to implement the ruling, and that procedures in this regard are being prepared by Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, including through changes in documentation and systems.
At the same time, she added, the government wants to introduce a law on the status of a close person, which is intended to regulate the situation of informal couples and provides, among other things, for solutions concerning joint tax settlement, inheritance, access to medical information, or health insurance.
Kotula assessed that although the decision concerns a specific couple, it may open the way for others in a similar situation. According to Kotula, this concerns "several thousand" marriages contracted abroad.
At the same time, she said that implementing the judgment will be a process and will not happen immediately. "This is the first important step and it opens the way for all such marriages... to be recognised in Poland."
Gawkowski also commented on the matter on Friday in a post on X.
"The Civil Registry Office must recognise a foreign marriage certificate of a same-sex couple. This is a landmark ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court!" he wrote, adding that the court decision confirmed that "rainbow families are equal before the law."
"This is a milestone for equal treatment," Gawkowski wrote and pledged that the goal of the Left, of which he is deputy leader, remains unchanged, namely "civil partnerships and marriage equality."
Later on Friday, the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party announced that it would submit a motion to the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) regarding NSA's interpretation of the constitutional provision on marriage.
The head of the PiS parliamentary caucus, Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters in the lower house Sejm that although the very ruling by the NSA cannot be appealed to the TK, the provision on the basis of which the ruling was issued can be challenged.
"Therefore, the PiS parliamentary caucus will submit such a motion to the Constitutional Tribunal," he said.
Marcin Warchol, a lawyer and PiS MP who authored the request for appeal, said that "the Supreme Administrative Court has issued an unlawful and unconstitutional ruling, imposing solutions that are alien to the Polish constitution and Polish legal culture."
"Poles have never agreed to same-sex marriages being equated with marriages referred to in Article 18 of the constitution," Warchol added. (PAP)
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