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The President of the Republic of Poland exercised his veto power against the laws passed on May 29, 2026: the Act on the Status of the Closest Person in a Relationship and the Cohabitation Agreement and the Introductory Provisions to that act, which amended as many as 238 existing statutes.

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The Ordo Iuris Institute had been pointing out for nearly two years that the bill was contrary to Article 18 of the Polish Constitution – from its opinion in the 2024 public consultations, through participation in the work of the Sejm committee, to the opinion delivered to the President on July 2, 2026, with a request that he refuse to sign the laws.

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Contrary to the narrative of its sponsors, the law would not have filled any “legal gap.” The most important practical matters – healthcare, property, inheritance, and banking – have been available to people living in informal relationships for years.

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The veto halts the mechanism of the “law of small steps”: the bill’s own authors openly declared that it was merely a stage on the road to “marriage equality,” and the experience of 22 European countries shows that civil partnerships have everywhere preceded the redefinition of marriage.

The President of the Republic of Poland has exercised his right of veto (Article 122(5) of the Polish Constitution) and vetoed the Act on the Status of the Closest Person in a Relationship and the Cohabitation Agreement (Sejm print no. 2110) and the Introductory Provisions act (Sejm print no. 2111), passed by the Sejm on May 29, 2026, and transmitted to the head of state on June 26, 2026. Both laws now return to the Sejm, where overriding the veto would require a three-fifths majority – a majority the current ruling coalition does not have.

The President’s decision is consistent with his earlier declarations. As early as October 20, 2025, Karol Nawrocki announced: “I will not sign any law that would undermine the status of marriage, which is protected by the Constitution.” On May 27, 2026, the day before the vote in the Sejm, the Chancellery of the President presented a position which spelled out the logic of the process in plain terms: “the first step is the introduction of civil partnerships, the second step is the transcription of foreign same-sex marriages, and this then leads to further steps: to the fostering and adoption of children.”

Two years of the Institute’s work

The Ordo Iuris Institute accompanied this legislative process from the very beginning – substantively, consistently, and at every stage:

  • October–November 2024 – the Institute submitted a critical opinion in the public consultations on the original version of the bill (then still the “registered civil partnerships” bill), pointing out that the bill “should be definitively rejected as manifestly contrary to the Polish Constitution.”
  • October 17, 2025 – on the day the Left (Lewica) and the Polish People’s Party (PSL) announced a “new” bill under a changed name, the Institute held a press conference exposing the cosmetic nature of the changes, and published an extensive analysis entitled “Apparent Equality, Real Destruction,” on the consequences of institutionalizing informal relationships.
  • March 10, 2026 – representatives of the Institute took part in a session of the special Sejm committee, recalling that Poland’s Supreme Court has consistently held for more than 20 years that bills of this kind are contrary to the Constitution.
  • May 27, 2026 – the Institute published a commentary on the Sejm address of Minister Katarzyna Kotula, dissecting one by one the most frequently repeated slogans and catchphrases of the law’s supporters.
  • July 2, 2026 – the Institute delivered to the President of Poland an opinion on both laws, authored by attorney Rafał Dorosiński, concluding with an unequivocal request that the President exercise his right of veto.

In parallel, a citizens’ mobilization was under way – thousands of Poles signed the appeal to the President to veto the law at stopzwiazkompartnerskim.pl.

Why the law deserved a veto

There was no “legal gap.” The most important practical matters – healthcare, property, inheritance, and banking – have been available for years to people living in informal relationships. Already today, such persons can, among other things, authorize each other to receive information about their state of health and access their medical records, draw up a will, hold a joint bank account, take out a loan together, name their partner as an insurance beneficiary, succeed to a tenancy after a deceased partner, or refuse to give testimony incriminating their partner. The dispute was therefore not about “protection,” but about something else entirely: the creation of a second institution competing with marriage.

Contrary to the Constitution. The openly declared intention of the authors of Article 18 of the Polish Constitution was to give marriage a privileged position and to prevent the institutionalization of relationships resembling it. The Supreme Court – in its judgment of December 6, 2007 (ref. IV CSK 301/07), in its opinions of 2011 and 2012, and again in its letter of January 26, 2026, concerning the laws under review – has consistently pointed out that the absence of regulation of non-marital relationships is not a legal gap but a deliberate axiological choice of the framers of the Constitution, and that marital privileges “cannot be challenged by invoking Article 32 of the Constitution.” Donald Tusk’s government simply ignored this uniform line of both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal.

Destabilization of the family. The law introduced a model of a relationship designed from the outset as temporary: without any presumption of permanence (with the possibility of unilateral dissolution of the agreement by a declaration made before a notary), and without any requirement of fidelity, which was replaced by “open and flexible concepts of loyalty and respect.” A state that grants similar privileges to permanent and temporary, faithful and “open” relationships tells society that permanence and fidelity do not matter.

Injustice. The law was triply unjust and discriminatory. It treated unjustly:

  1. marriages as compared with same-sex unions (granting marital privileges – which exist because of the connection between marriage and children – to relationships that by their very nature can never have children),
  2. marriages as compared with cohabiting couples (granting marital privileges to those who could, but do not want to, take on marital obligations),
  3. people in relationships of dependency (a parent requiring care and an adult child, disabled siblings, and the like) as compared with same-sex couples. The latter would enjoy privileges, while the former would not. Yet the only difference between the two types of relationship is the sexual character of the latter. And since, in their case, it is devoid of any social significance, it should not be a ground for such differentiation.

A blow to demographics. Couples who are not married decide to have children far less often – a consistent international pattern. In France, which the bill’s sponsors invoked, 68 percent of married 27-year-olds have a child, compared with only 43 percent of those in a civil partnership (“PACS”). Importing the French model also means importing its effects: a further decline in the number of marriages and a further weakening of fertility.

Growing costs for all taxpayers. According to the government’s Regulatory Impact Assessment, the total annual cost of the law would have grown with every year – from PLN 105 million in the fifth year to as much as PLN 2.372 billion in the tenth year of its operation. The whole of society was to finance privileges for relationships that take on no lasting obligations and make no contribution to the generational continuity of the community.

The alleged “agreement.” The bill was presented as a compromise. Yet Minister Katarzyna Kotula herself spoke in the Sejm of a bill “far from what we would like to come out with,” making no secret of the fact that her “dream” is the redefinition of marriage. This would not have been a compromise closing the dispute, but a tactical compromise – a breach in the Polish legal order that was to be successively widened in the name of “equality and non-discrimination.”

What comes next

The President’s veto does not end the dispute over the shape of Polish family law – further attempts to push through similar solutions, under this or another name, are to be expected. The Ordo Iuris Institute will continue to monitor the legislative process and to stand in defense of the constitutional identity of marriage as a union of a woman and a man – the foundation on which the family, the social order, and Poland’s demographic future rest, notes Dorosiński, a member of the Board of the Ordo Iuris Institute.

Translated using Claude.ai

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Source of cover photo: iStock