WARSAW — Poland’s government on Friday put forward a proposal for civil partnerships that strains the ruling coalition, disappoints LGBTQ+ rights activists and has little chance of being signed into law by right-wing President Karol Nawrocki.
The issue has haunted the four-party coalition headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk since it won power from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party two years ago.
Efforts to move on the issue were blocked by frictions within Tusk’s four-party coalition, with the resistance led by the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL).
That forced the government to put forward a bill that tries to keep PSL on board, but does little to satisfy the coalition’s centrist and left-wing backers because it offers a civil partnership status that falls well short of marriage.
Tusk underlined the unsatisfactory compromise that produced the legislation.
“The nature of this coalition … lead to a situation where either there is complete deadlock and nothing can be done, or a compromise is sought that will certainly make people’s lives easier and more bearable … although no one will be jumping for joy,” Tusk told reporters.
Nawrocki, a PiS ally, has long made clear he would oppose legal provisions establishing “quasi-marriages” or otherwise threatening the traditional institution.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS, denounced the bill on Friday, saying it was not only “grossly unconstitutional, but aims to replace traditional marriage with pseudo-unions.”
PSL and PiS are long-time competitors for votes in the conservative Polish countryside, where the Roman Catholic Church still holds sway.
Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the leader of PSL, said he does not find that the proposed civil union status mirrors marriage. “It makes life easier,” he said.
“It’s not a proposal of our dreams, it’s a proposal of the coalition reality and with Karol Nawrocki as president,” Katarzyna Kotula, the Left’s minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, told a press briefing in the parliament Friday, referring to months of talks with PSL on the issue.
Inoffensive legislation
As officials presented the basics of the proposal, Kotula treaded carefully, making no direct mention of LGBTQ+ families, marriage, or adoption — all no-goes for the agrarians.
“The proposal excludes any provisions related to children, such as custody or adoption. There only are practical measures intended to make life easier for Poles,” Urszula Pasławska, a PSL MP, told the briefing.
“The law would not, in any way, infringe upon or undermine the institution of marriage,” Pasławska added.
Under Poland’s constitution, marriage is defined as “a union between a woman and a man.”
Poles’ support for marriage equality ranges from 40 to 50 percent, depending on the poll, but backing for civil partnerships is higher.
The draft legislative proposal, titled somewhat awkwardly the “law on the status of a close person in a relationship and on a cohabitation agreement,” seeks to define rights and obligations between partners in an informal relationship. It doesn’t specify the sex of the partners.
The draft outlines provisions on “mutual respect, support, care, loyalty and cooperation for the common good,” Kotula said. It guarantees the right to shared housing, mutual alimony, access to each other’s medical information, exemption from inheritance and donation taxes, and joint tax filing for couples who declare shared property.
The draft would also provide relief from civil transaction taxes, entitlement to a survivor’s pension, inheritance under a will, access to health insurance for both partners and care leave.
But that falls far short of allowing same-sex couples to get married — something that’s increasingly common in other EU countries.
The bill got tepid praise from the Campaign Against Homophobia, an NGO.
“It proposes modest, cautious measures that offer a little bit of safety to those who previously had none. It’s a step forward — but so small and careful that it’s hard to see in it the courage that all families in Poland truly deserve,” it said.
In the campaign’s latest annual ranking of LGBTQ+ rights, Poland is the second-lowest in the EU, a slight increase from previous years when it was last.
LGBTQ+ rights organization Miłość Nie Wyklucza (Love Does Not Exclude) said the proposal does contain some progressive solutions, but it creates the danger of freezing further progress, said Hubert Sobecki, one of the group’s leaders.
“What am I supposed to do now, kiss their hands in gratitude? We’re going to have two kinds of people in Poland. Those who can marry legally and enjoy all that comes with it and those who don’t,” Sobecki said.
The post Poland’s ‘modest’ civil partnership proposal pleases almost no-one appeared first on Politico.
