Polish president Karol Nawrocki has vetoed a government bill that would have given unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, a legal status and a number of rights, saying the proposals would weaken the constitutional protection of marriage.
The bill, backed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing leftist-liberal coalition, would have allowed two adults to sign an agreement before a notary and register it with the civil registry.
The agreement would have granted them some of the rights available to married couples, including joint property, access to a partner’s medical information, inheritance tax exemptions, and decisions about burial.
If adopted, the law would have been the first to give same-sex couples legal recognition under Polish law.
Explaining his decision, Nawrocki said the bill went much further than the “closest person” status he had supported during his election campaign—giving loved ones practical rights, such as access to medical information or the ability to represent each other before public authorities, as long as it did not create an alternative to marriage.
The president argued that the Tusk government’s legislation created a new type of legally recognised relationship that was too similar to marriage.
“As the guardian of the constitution, I cannot accept a solution that would lead to the loss of the special status of marriage defined in article 18 of the constitution as a union between a woman and a man, placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland,” Nawrocki said.
He also argued that the proposed partnerships would give couples many of the benefits of marriage without the same responsibilities, while being much easier to end.
The prime minister called the veto “an expression of contempt toward people and their right to happiness and a normal life.”
Paweł Szefernaker, head of the presidential office, defended the veto, saying the government’s bill went far beyond solving practical problems. Instead, he said, it created a formal legal relationship with many of the same effects as marriage.
Despite the president’s decision, the government’s plenipotentiary for equality, Katarzyna Kotula, said the veto would not stop changes already taking place.
In recent months, Polish authorities have begun registering same-sex marriages performed in other European Union countries after rulings by the European Court of Justice and Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court.
The right-wing opposition says the courts and the government are introducing legal recognition of same-sex relationships despite Polish law itself forbidding same-sex marriage.
They argue that European left-wing ideals are slowly creeping into Poland’s society through European law, with the most recent example being a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights which said that Poland had violated a child’s rights by refusing to register a British birth certificate listing two women as parents.
The opposition Konfederacja party recently proposed a law to ban adoption by same-sex couples, arguing that recent legal developments could eventually open the door to such rights.
