On 2 July 2026, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered one decision and one judgment in two cases which, whilst resting on different facts, raised the same legal issue. The common thread between the two cases is that the children of two same-sex couples residing in the United Kingdom under a registered civil partnership were unable to obtain Polish identity documents, such as Polish passports, because their UK birth certificates were not transcribed by the Polish authorities.

In both cases, A.D.-K. and Others v. Poland and A.P. and R.P. v. Poland, the applicants – in each instance two women in a British civil partnership – tried to have their child’s British birth certificate, which listed the birth mother as “mother” and her partner as “parent,” registered in the Polish civil status registry. However, the Polish authorities refused, citing public policy reasons. The Supreme Administrative Court eventually ruled that including two women as parents on a birth certificate would violate the core principles of Polish law.

Full Article: https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/legal-vacuum-or-legal-uncertainty-in-strasbourg/