The Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic (ÚS SR) has rejected a petition by a group of MPs who sought to have parts of the Family Act and other laws concerning marriage declared unconstitutional. The 2023 petition sought, among other things, to extend the protection provided by the Family Act to families formed in ways other than marriage and thereby create room for an institution recognizing same-sex couples. The challenged provisions also included parts of the Civil Code and laws on social insurance and financial allowances for compensation related to severe disabilities.
The reasons for the Constitutional Court’s decision will be known once the justification for the ruling is published.
A group of MPs approached the Constitutional Court during the previous parliamentary term. They also asked the court to assess the legislative inaction of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, consisting of its failure to adopt legislation recognizing same-sex couples. The Constitutional Court rejected this part of the petition in April 2024.
Through their petition, the MPs sought to ensure compliance with human rights standards concerning the recognition and protection of same-sex couples’ relationships. “We are convinced that the Constitutional Court is the institution that can send a clear message to the National Council to adopt legislation that will be in line with the Constitution, ensure recognition for these people, and grant them the rights to which they are entitled, so that they can deal with ordinary life situations such as inheritance, widows’ and widowers’ pensions, continuing a business after the death of a partner, accident benefits, caring for a sick partner, financial allowances to compensate for severe disabilities, or access to information about a partner’s health,” Mária Kolíková (SaS) said in May 2023.
The group of MPs justified the petition by saying that legislative proposals to recognize same-sex couples had so far failed to gain approval in Parliament. They argued that in some countries where politicians had been unable to make further progress toward respecting minority rights, constitutional courts had helped advance the issue.
At the time, the petition was signed by the entire SaS parliamentary group, as well as MPs associated with the non-parliamentary Democrats party and former OĽANO MPs who had joined the Civic-Democratic Platform. They argued that Slovakia had long been unable to provide legal recognition for same-sex couples, while most Council of Europe member states, as well as the overwhelming majority of European Union member states and democratic countries around the world, provide some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples.
Source: TASR
