A Polish administrative court ruled today that a local civil registry must record the marriage of a Polish gay couple wed in Germany.

The decision follows a ruling in November from the European Court of Justice that all nations in the European Union must recognize lawful same-sex marriages performed in other E.U. countries.

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Court grants big victory for same-sex marriage rights in European Union

The same couple was the subject of both rulings.

The E.U. court maintained that recognizing the couple’s marriage in Berlin in 2018 didn’t mean that Polish law had to be changed to permit same-sex marriage there.

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The Polish court agreed, ordering that the men’s German same-sex marriage certificate be simply transcribed into the Polish system, resulting in de facto government recognition of a same-sex couple’s marriage in the country.

“This is the best path to real change today,” said Hubert Sobecki with Love Doesn’t Exclude, a Polish LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

“We know that government agencies have been waiting for this ruling,” he told the onet.pl news site. “With the legislative path blocked for the five years of Karol Nawrocki’s presidency, we have redirected our efforts to implementing the CJEU ruling.” 

Nawrocki, a right-wing ally of the Law and Justice Party, began his term in August.

After Law and Justice was tossed out of power in Parliament in 2023, the presidency has become the biggest impediment to progress on LGBTQ+ rights in Poland. Nawrocki campaigned on an anti-LGBTQ+ platform and has vowed to veto legislation legalizing marriage equality.

The men at the center of the case returned to Poland years after their marriage, and asked their local registry to transcribe their German-language marriage certificate into the Polish civil register. They were denied.

The men challenged the decision to the Polish Supreme Administrative Court — the same court that ruled in their favor on Friday — which referred the case to the European Court of Justice. That court ruled in November that the couple’s marriage was valid throughout the 27-member bloc.

“The spouses in question, as E.U. citizens, enjoy the freedom to move and reside within the territory of the member states and the right to lead a normal family life when exercising that freedom and upon returning to their member state of origin,” the court said.

“When they create a family life in a host member state, in particular by virtue of marriage, they must have the certainty to be able to pursue that family life upon returning to their member state of origin.”

18 countries in the E.U. recognize same-sex marriages, more than half of the 27 member states. The Netherlands was the first — and the first country in the world — to do so, in 2001.

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