EU Court Mandates Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Concluded in Other Member States

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), situated in Luxembourg, issued a landmark ruling on November 25, 2025, in case C-713/23, known as the Troian case. This decision compels all EU member states to recognize same-sex marriages that have been legally formalized in another member country. The verdict establishes that refusing such recognition, even when national law does not provide for same-sex unions, constitutes a violation of fundamental EU citizenship rights. Specifically, this infringes upon the rights to freedom of movement and residence, alongside the right to respect for private and family life, as guaranteed under Article 7 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The Court determined that denying recognition to a same-sex marriage contracted abroad while simultaneously accepting foreign marriages between opposite-sex couples amounts to clear discrimination. The core of the legal dispute involved a Polish couple who had legally married in Berlin, Germany, back in 2018. Upon their relocation to Poland, local authorities refused to transcribe, or officially register, their German marriage certificate. This refusal was based on Polish legislation, which, at the time, did not recognize unions between individuals of the same sex.

The CJEU clarified that this mandate does not force Poland to amend its domestic legislation to legalize same-sex marriage within its borders. However, because the transcription process represented the sole effective legal pathway for acknowledging a foreign marriage within Poland, the country is obligated to apply this procedure without any discriminatory treatment between same-sex and opposite-sex unions. This ruling originated from a preliminary reference initiated by the Supreme Administrative Court of Poland.

This judgment significantly reinforces the supremacy of fundamental EU rights and free movement provisions over national constitutional definitions of marriage. It marks a crucial step toward harmonizing family recognition for mobile EU citizens. The Court adopted a pragmatic stance, focusing the obligation strictly on recognition for the purposes of EU law, thereby balancing national sovereignty over marriage definitions with the essential protection of EU citizens' rights.

This ruling builds upon the precedent set by the 2018 "Coman" decision, which previously secured residence rights for the spouses of EU citizens in same-sex marriages by deeming the term "spouse" gender-neutral. The plight of the Polish couple highlighted a legal lacuna that can arise in member states lacking equivalent legal status for same-sex partnerships. Furthermore, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has previously intervened in matters concerning Poland, notably ruling in December 2023 in "Przybyszewska and Others v. Poland" and in September 2024 in "Formela and Others v. Poland," both finding violations of the right to respect for family life due to the absence of a legal framework for recognizing such unions.

The opinion delivered by Advocate General Ryszard de la Tour on April 3, 2025, had already signaled the necessity of such a ruling, emphasizing that withholding transcription creates a legal void if no alternative recognition mechanism exists. Legal experts note that for Poland, where Article 18 of the 1997 Constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this decision serves as a direct instruction to adhere to broader European equality standards. Consequently, the administrative court in Poland is now tasked with resolving the couple’s case in alignment with the directives issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union.