The EU’s Court of Justice ruled in November 2025 that member states must recognise same-sex marriages concluded in another EU country. Slovak lawyers Ivan Novotný and Metod Špaček are now testing that ruling in court after their government refused to register their 2020 Austrian marriage, AFP reported on Thursday.
Two other cases reported that week show what recognition looks like in other hands: a Kraków mayor’s decision on a march and a Turkish Cypriot court’s first hate-crime conviction.
Slovakia Refuses to Recognise
Novotný, 31, and Špaček, 51, are lawyers and former diplomats who applied to register their marriage at the end of 2025. Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok refused in a letter citing the constitution, which has defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman since 2014. The couple alleges that Prime Minister Robert Fico told the registry office in June not to register it.
The couple is not asking Slovakia to allow same-sex marriage, only to recognise one made legally in Austria. That is also the limit of the EU ruling, which does not force states to allow such marriages at home. Last month, the Constitutional Cour struck down a 2023 petition to extend legal protection to families outside marriage. A citizen married in Vienna but single in Bratislava cannot move freely like a straight one, so the first test is whether a government will obey the ruling.
Kraków Splits Symbol From Substance
Poland, where the ruling began, shows how a city can handle it differently. Gibała won the mayoral election on 11 October and announced the next day that he would not give city patronage to the equality march. He said the community behind it had grown partisan, although he has attended it himself. The march, held since 2004, is not banned, and his predecessors had backed it: Jacek Majchrowski gave patronage from 2021 and Aleksander Miszalski attended in 2024.
Yet TVP reported that Gibała also said he would not oppose registering same-sex marriages concluded abroad. That is the substance of the EU ruling, and for a couple it counts for more than a patron’s name on a poster. Slovakia has done the reverse, keeping the symbols of its constitution while refusing the registration.
Cyprus Shows Courts Moving Alone
In the Turkish Cypriot-run north, where EU law is suspended, the Trikomo district court sentenced Ergun Sunmez on 24 September to six months in prison. Five months were for assaulting his ex-wife Pınar Taş in 2023, and one month was for a homophobic hate crime against Berna Numan, who was in the flat. The court said a hate crime needs a specific motive of prejudice against sexual orientation, and the conviction is the first of its kind in the north.
One month of a six-month sentence is modest, but it treats prejudice as its own offence. Across the three cases, courts recognise LGBT people while politicians resist or hedge. The EU court ordered recognition, a Cypriot judge named the prejudice, and Slovakia’s government refused to comply. Equality advances where judges decide and stalls where politicians do, and couples like Novotný and Špaček live in the gap.
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