The Slovak legal system doesn't provide any alternative legal framework enabling same-sex couples to achieve adequate legal recognition and protection of their family life, the Constitutional Court stated in the grounds for its 23 September decision when it dismissed the appeal by a group of MPs who had challenged the provisions of the Family Act and other laws relating to marriage.
According to the court, the constitutional issue doesn't lie primarily in the very existence of the contested provisions, nor in the special protection afforded to marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The Constitutional Court stated that the crux of the problem lies "in the absence of parallel or alternative legal provisions governing cohabitation, the creation of which, however, does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court". In this case, it is a matter of legislative inaction, not legislative omission. "In this context, the Constitutional Court has neither the power nor the substantive grounds for a ruling invalidating the provisions in question in their currently valid and effective form, which in itself is not unconstitutional," it stated.
According to the Constitutional Court, the absence of supplementary - yet systemically and fundamentally new - legislation means that a number of legal consequences linked to marriage or family status remain systematically inaccessible to same-sex couples.
Source: TASR
