Warsaw, July 31, 2026
tvpworld.com
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal on Tuesday struck down a law that would have granted legal recognition to same-sex couples who married in other European Union member states before relocating to Poland.
The unanimous ruling reverses a policy shift the Polish government had introduced earlier this year and could trigger a broader dispute with the EU’s top court, reports inquirer.net.
The law being overturned had been designed to bring Poland into compliance with a November 2025 ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union. That ruling did not require Poland to legalize same-sex marriage domestically or to formally recognize same-sex unions as marriages. Instead, it required that same-sex couples who married legally in another EU country and then moved to Poland have their marital status entered into the Polish civil registry.
The case originated with two men, one a Polish national and the other holding dual German-Polish citizenship, who married in Germany in 2018 and moved to Poland in 2019.
In March, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court ruled that entering such unions into the civil registry wouldn’t violate Poland’s national identity or interfere with its authority over family and marriage law. Following that decision, the Polish government implemented legislation in May that was scheduled to take effect at the end of August.
The right-wing opposition party PiS then challenged the legislation before the Constitutional Tribunal, which ruled in the party’s favor on Tuesday.
In its statement, the tribunal said the plan to prepare and issue certified civil registry copies for unions “that do not constitute a union between a woman and a man” was inconsistent with the Polish constitution. Article 18 defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman and places marriage, the family, motherhood and parenthood under the protection of the Polish state.
According to census data, roughly 70% of Poland’s population identifies as Roman Catholic, while an estimated 0.5% to 1% identifies as Orthodox Christian. Poland is one of four EU member states, along with Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, that doesn’t permit same-sex marriage or same-sex civil unions.
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