Editorial Staff
April 1, 2026
A March 20 ruling by Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) may seem technical at first glance, but its significance is greater. By ordering the recognition of a same-sex marriage contracted in another EU member state in Polish civil records, the court has opened a new chapter in Poland’s dispute over marriage, sovereignty, and European law. The decision does not formally introduce same-sex marriage into Polish law, but in practice it inserts such unions into the legal system by judicial means, without any corresponding democratic legislative decision.
The case concerned a Polish same-sex couple who married in Germany in 2018 and later returned to Poland. When they sought recognition of their marriage by the Polish civil registry, the office refused. That decision was upheld by the administrative courts, which cited the constitutional and statutory framework defining marriage in Poland and the lack of any legal basis for registering such a union. On appeal, however, the Supreme Administrative Court referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). In November 2025, the CJEU held that Poland was obliged to recognize such marriages due to the rights of all EU citizens, citing especially private and family life as well as freedom of movement. Following that judgment, the NSA ruled that the administration must register the legal status of the couple.
The courts’ argument is revealing. According to the reasoning, Article 18 of the Polish Constitution—under which marriage, as a union of a man and a woman, is placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland—does not necessarily exclude recognition of other relationships. In other words, the constitutional protection of marriage is interpreted not as a barrier against alternative relationships, but merely as a guarantee for the traditional one. The CJEU argued that refusal to recognize such a marriage would amount to unjustified discrimination and a restriction on rights guaranteed by the European legal order. Thus, a broad principle of non-discrimination was made to prevail over the constitutional definition of marriage in Poland.
This is why the ruling matters far beyond its limited administrative scope. Neither the CJEU nor the NSA declared that Poland must legalize same-sex marriage domestically. Yet through the recognition of foreign marriages, both courts have in effect introduced a form of same-sex marital status into the Polish legal order through an alternative route. A matter that, in a democratic system, ought to be resolved through parliamentary legislation and constitutional argument is instead being transformed through judicial-administrative interpretation—a striking example of juristocracy in action, as democratic processes are replaced by liberal judicial moral activism that invokes expansive interpretations of human rights and supranational obligations.
The conservative reaction in Poland was swift. Confederation leader and Deputy Marshal of the Sejm Krzysztof Bosak denounced the ruling as contrary not only to the Constitution, but also to the established jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Administrative Court itself. In his view, the CJEU has no mandate to redefine constitutional matters reserved to the Polish state, and judges who submit to such external pressure abandon their duty to the Polish constitutional order. Bosak called for statutory correction of the court’s error and for the CJEU ruling to be treated as one of many European judgments that member states decline to implement when they exceed treaty limits.
Yet that is also what makes the ruling so dangerous from a conservative perspective. Its practical effects are carried through judicial decisions, administrative practice, and implementing ordinances below the level of formal legislation. That means they cannot simply be blocked by a presidential veto and are not easily reversible through the institutional tools currently available to the Polish Right. In this sense, the ruling bypasses not only Parliament, but also ordinary checks and balances through which political resistance would normally be expressed.
A group of Law and Justice MPs has, meanwhile, asked the Constitutional Tribunal to examine whether the provisions governing civil status registration can really be interpreted in the way the NSA has now interpreted them. Their point is clear: if ambiguity in ordinary law is sufficient to permit recognition of same-sex marriages concluded abroad, then that ambiguity should be removed by an explicit interpretation of Article 18 by the Tribunal. The objective is to close the loopholes through which same-sex unions might receive indirect recognition under the guise of administration.
Yet even that may not settle the matter. Under Donald Tusk’s government, Constitutional Tribunal rulings have been ignored or left unpublished on the grounds that parts of the court are allegedly improperly constituted. This means that even if the Tribunal rules in favor of the conservative position, such a judgment may simply deepen the existing dualism of Poland’s legal order rather than resolve the dispute.
The practical consequences are already visible. Poland’s state social insurance institution, ZUS, has already announced that it will comply by recognizing insurance rights flowing from such a marriage. The civil registry system will also need technical alteration, since it is not designed to register two men or two women as spouses. What began as an individual administrative case will therefore require modifications to procedures, databases, and implementing ordinances across the state apparatus.
The longer-term consequences are greater still. Polish same-sex couples will now have a clear incentive to marry abroad and return home seeking recognition. LGBT organizations are already encouraging precisely such a path. Once that process becomes normalized, liberals will predictably argue that same-sex unions are already part of Poland’s legal order in practice and that the law should simply catch up with social reality. This is the familiar ‘salami slicing’ tactic: first comes recognition in exceptional cross-border cases, then bureaucratic normalization, followed by claims that formal institutionalization is merely the completion of what already exists. Unsurprisingly, left-wing MEP and gay rights activist Krzysztof Śmiszek hailed the ruling as historic, celebrating what he called the “first Polish marriage of two men.”
That is why the verdict should not be dismissed as a minor administrative adjustment. It is better understood as a quiet but consequential breakthrough. Neither the Polish constitution nor its marriage laws have been formally amended, but an important threshold has, nevertheless, been crossed. As in other Western countries where courts have driven legal-cultural transformation in spite of what electorates or legislatures were willing to call for, the judiciary has again acted as the preferred instrument of liberal change, leaving conservatives with the prospect of an uphill battle to reverse its effects in the future.
The situation also has a broader political significance. For the Polish right, the case will serve as another example of the EU using legal mechanisms to press ideological change on a reluctant member state. That perception will deepen rising Eurosceptic instincts on the Polish Right and further entrench the conviction that Brussels and Luxembourg are not neutral guardians of treaty law but active participants in Europe’s cultural conflicts.
Should conservatives return to government after next year’s elections, this issue may become an additional part of a larger confrontation with EU institutions. What appears today as an administrative ruling on civil registration may therefore become another vital point of contention in relations between Poland and the European Union tomorrow.
