Poland is already one of the EU member states furthest from marriage equality. And on July 17 it took another step backwards when President Karol Nawrocki vetoed two bills that would have granted a limited set of basic rights to same-sex couples and unmarried heterosexual partners. The proposed legislation would have allowed any two adults, regardless of sex, to sign an agreement before a notary and register it with the civil registry. The agreement would have regulated practical matters including joint property, access to medical information, inheritance and funeral arrangements. “I cannot accept a solution that would lead to the loss of the special status of marriage set out in Article 18 of the Polish constitution, which defines marriage as a union between a woman and a man,” Nawrocki said on announcing the veto. Speaking to journalists in parliament, PM Donald Tusk described the legislation as “the absolute minimum that we had all worked towards… If the president considers even this unacceptable, it is difficult to imagine any version that would win the approval of the right.” Sejm Speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty called the veto “scandalous”. The decision puts the president at odds with public opinion – a 2025 CBOS poll found that 62 per cent of respondents supported civil partnerships for same-sex couples. Nawrocki’s veto also leaves Poland with an increasingly contradictory legal landscape. Following a November 2025 ruling by the EU’s highest court, the ECJ, Polish authorities must recognise same-sex marriages legally concluded in another EU member state. Warsaw registered its first such foreign marriage in May 2026, although same-sex couples still cannot marry or enter a legally recognised civil partnership in Poland itself. The country remains near the bottom of ILGA-Europe’s annual Rainbow Map, which assesses the laws and policies affecting LGBTQ+ people across 49 European countries. In its latest ranking, only Bulgaria and Romania scored lower among EU member states.
As political tensions between Poland and Ukraine deepen and reports of attacks on Ukrainians become more frequent, two small grassroots demonstrations sought to show that friendship between the communities remains alive. On Sunday, Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians gathered outside the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw for the “Good Neighbourhood” rally. They carried national flags and placards reading “Don’t let them divide us”, “Stop hatred”, “Don’t be indifferent – react”, and “We are with you, with all our hearts”. Speakers urged both communities to resist attempts to turn them against one another. “Our task is not merely to respond to hatred,” Dzmitry Halko, a Belarusian journalist and analyst who organised the rally, posted later on Facebook. “We must make kindness, courage and good neighbourliness attractive too.” Halko said the steady stream of reports about attacks on Ukrainians had convinced him that expressing outrage privately or on social media was no longer enough. Opponents of xenophobia, he argued, needed to become visible in public. “Bots do not take to the streets, but they move people,” he wrote, describing how relentless online hostility can strip hatred of its stigma until it begins to appear normal, fashionable and ultimately acceptable. He announced plans for a nationwide March for Friendship in August or September. At the same time, just over a dozen people gathered on Wroclaw’s market square to protest hatred and to urge bystanders to intervene when they witness aggression.