The constitutional court ruled on Tuesday that a digital ministry regulation allowing the registration of same-sex marriages concluded abroad is unconstitutional.
The decision was issued by a three-judge panel chaired by Constitutional Tribunal head Bogdan Święczkowski.
All three judges on the panel had been appointed with the backing of the previous right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government. The case was brought by lawmakers from the PiS party.
Judge Stanisław Piotrowicz said a foreign marriage certificate could be entered into the Polish register only when it concerned a marriage between a woman and a man, as defined by the Polish constitution.
Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski rejected the ruling at a news conference in Poland's parliament.
"The illegal tribunal of Mr. Święczkowski wants to deprive hundreds, and perhaps thousands in the future, of the right to happiness,” Gawkowski said.
He said work on implementing the regulation would continue, with the necessary registration procedures and documents expected to be ready in August.
"Work on the regulation supporting transcription will continue, and we will not stop," he said.
Transcription is the administrative process of entering information from a foreign civil-status document into the Polish register. It does not introduce same-sex marriage under Polish law but allows marriages legally concluded abroad to be recorded accurately in Polish documents.
Gawkowski said Polish authorities had already transcribed 184 foreign marriage certificates involving 368 people.
"These are people who were supposed to be treated with dignity, and the Polish state will treat them with dignity," he said.
Government spokesman Adam Szłapka said the tribunal’s announcement did not change the legal situation.
He argued that the tribunal’s current composition was legally defective and said its decision could not be regarded as a valid ruling.
The contested regulation was published in the Journal of Laws on May 22 and is scheduled to take effect on August 23.
It changes official marriage-document templates by replacing separate fields for a woman’s and a man’s details with fields that can accommodate either sex.
The change applies to full and abridged marriage certificates and other documents issued from the civil-status register.
The ruling deepens a longstanding dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal’s status. In March 2024, the Polish lower house adopted a resolution stating that public bodies could violate the principle of legality by acting on tribunal decisions issued in breach of the law.
Since that resolution, the government has declined to publish the tribunal’s decisions in the Journal of Laws, preventing them from formally entering into force.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP