The country of same-sex couples, Romania, was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which ruled on Tuesday that the country violated their rights by refusing to legally recognize their marriage.
In its verdict, the Strasbourg-based court ruled by five votes to two that there had been a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights relating to the right to respect for private life and the family.
Romania, where homosexuality was only decriminalized in the early 2000s, still does not allow marriage or civil partnerships between people of the same sex.
21 same-sex couples had brought cases before the ECtHR in 2019 and 2020. They explained that they were denied many of the rights accorded by law to married couples.
“None of the arguments put forward by the government to justify restricting legal unions to heterosexual marriages alone can outweigh the applicants’ interest in having their relationships recognized,” the court said.
She also stressed that “recognition of same-sex partnerships would not undermine the institution of marriage, as heterosexual couples can still marry.”
The Justice Department of the Council of Europe recalled that member states are obliged to put in place a legal framework that allows for adequate recognition and protection of relationships between same-sex couples, benefiting from some flexibility in the form of recognition and the type of protection granted .