by Tony Rucinski, Coalition for Marriage
Poland is now the front line in Europe’s battle for marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman. The President is holding the line. But the forces against it are marshalling – in EU court rulings, in Sejm committee rooms, in a Prime Minister’s apology. How long can real marriage survive there? This week, I sat down again with Olivier Bault of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture in Warsaw. Watch our conversation here:
On 30 April 2026, President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the Tusk government’s ‘express divorce’ Bill. “A Las Vegas-style marriage – quickly entered into and easy to end – may be a cinematic scene,” he said, but: “In a serious state, laws and statutes are not the writing of a film script.” The Bill would have let couples without children dissolve a marriage at a civil registry desk. No court. No reflection. It would have transformed marriage, Olivier says, “into entering a trial period where the actual commitment would come about only with the first child”.
The pressure has been building for months. The EU’s top court had ordered Poland to recognise foreign same-sex marriages contracted in other EU states. The Tusk government approved a ‘cohabitation agreement’ Bill that extends partnership recognition to same-sex couples. Then the dam broke. On 7 May, days before our interview, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court forced three more civil registries to transcribe foreign same-sex marriages. On 12 May, Prime Minister Donald Tusk apologised to same-sex couples “who, for many, many years, felt rejected and humiliated” by Poland’s refusal to recognise their relationships. “For many years”, he continued, “the state has failed the test”.