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By Maria Kędzior
On 14 May 2026, Warsaw became the first place in Poland to recognise a same-sex union, by transcribing a marriage conducted by two Polish men in Germany into its civil registry. It was a bureaucratic act, but its legal implications are anything but routine.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government has since issued a regulation allowing registry offices nationwide to also recognise same-sex marriages conducted in other European Union member states, thereby implementing rulings by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the Polish Supreme Administrative Court (NSA).
The government has issued a regulation allowing foreign same-sex marriages to be entered in the civil registry
The decision comes in response to an EU court order and marks a major change in a country that does not allow same-sex unions under domestic law https://t.co/2an5mGtnHl
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 22, 2026
Yet, given that Polish domestic law does not allow for any form of same-sex union – while the constitution states that marriage “as a union of a man and a woman” shall be protected by the state – there remains great uncertainty as to what transcription into the civil registry will actually mean for same-sex couples.
Will they receive the same rights as other married couples, such as joint property and tax settlement, exemption from inheritance and gift taxes, and access to their partner’s medical information?
The question is all the more pressing because, with conservative President Karol Nawrocki likely to veto any legislative efforts by the more liberal government to broaden LGBT+ rights, the courts have become the primary battlefield on which the issue will be played out.
We therefore asked five experts on the law, human rights and LGBT+ advocacy what they believe the legal consequences of transcribing same-sex marriages into the Polish civil registry will be.
“The consequences are not yet known”
Anna Mikołajczyk, the office of Poland’s commissioner for human rights
At present, the legal consequences of accepting marriage certificates issued abroad into Polish civil registers are not yet known, apart from those arising from European Union law in the context of the EU’s freedom of movement and residence.
Transcription itself consists of the transfer of foreign civil status records to Polish registers. The Act of 28 November 2014 on Civil Status Records does not attach any further consequences to the act of transcription. However, the transcription of these records should not be treated as a purely symbolic matter.
Poland is obliged to implement the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the recognition and protection of same-sex relationships within the Polish legal system (e.g. the judgement of 19 September 2024 in the case of Formela and Others v. Poland), which amounts to regulating the rights and obligations associated with this. Such regulation should be enshrined in an act of law.
The EU court has ruled that Poland must recognise the marriage of a Polish same-sex couple who married in Germany, even though Polish law does not allow such marriages.
The ruling requires Poland to change its system for recognising such marriages https://t.co/upbcxVEdd8
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 25, 2025
“The constitution does not define marriage as a union between a man and a woman”
Jarosław Jagura, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
Public authorities and various institutions should not treat foreign marriages whose documents have been transcribed into Polish civil registers differently on the basis of whether they are same-sex or opposite-sex marriages.
Nor is this precluded by article 18 of the Polish constitution, which, contrary to some opinions, does not contain a legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The constitution states that such a union (the marriage of a man and a woman) is protected by the state, which does not, of course, preclude the possibility that there may also be other legally recognised unions that will benefit from such state protection.
In its judgement of November 2025, the CJEU did not use the wording familiar from earlier rulings, namely that the recognition of marriages is solely “for the purposes of exercising the freedom of movement of persons” – that is, movement and residence within the EU – which would suggest a narrow interpretation of this situation.
Spouses should be able to continue their family life in another EU member state with similar guarantees of protection and similar rights, and not merely with the guarantee of ceremonial recognition of their relationship through the issue of a Pol…
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