Romanian Same-Sex Couples Are Now Filing to Have Their EU Marriages Transcribed. The Government Has 30 Days to Respond.

On May 13 the Romanian LGBTQ+ rights group ACCEPT, together with the first wave of same-sex couples married in other EU member states, filed a formal administrative request demanding that the Romanian state transcribe their foreign marriages into the country’s civil status registers. The event — staged at Bucharest’s Romanian Athenaeum and titled “Romania, We Say YES! Our Families Will Find Their Place at Home” — is the first organized attempt to enforce the EU Court of Justice’s November 2025 Cupriak-Trojan ruling inside Romania.

The Romanian state now has 30 days under administrative procedure law to respond. The bet is straightforward: if it refuses, the next stop is administrative court, and the next stop after that is back to Luxembourg. Each of those stops has a strong record of ordering Romania to do exactly what it has refused to do for the past three years.

What Cupriak-Trojan actually requires

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s Grand Chamber ruling in Cupriak-Trojan v. Mazowieckie Voivode came down in November 2025. It originated in a Polish referral, but its scope is EU-wide. The court held that under EU free-movement law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, every member state must recognize same-sex marriages performed in another member state for the purpose of family rights — including civil-status recognition for couples who exercise their right to move within the EU.

The ruling does not require Romania to perform same-sex marriages. It requires Romania to acknowledge the legal existence of marriages performed in countries that do. In practice, for a Romanian-Italian couple married in Spain who now live in Bucharest, it means the Spanish marriage certificate must be transcribable into the Romanian civil status register, the same way an opposite-sex couple’s foreign marriage is routinely transcribed today.

Romania’s current civil status code does not allow this. The Ministry of Internal Affairs takes the position that Article 277(2) of the Civil Code — which says marriages “between persons of the same sex” performed abroad are not recognized in Romania — overrides EU law. ACCEPT and constitutional lawyers working on the case argue, with the November 2025 CJEU ruling now on their side, that this position is no longer legally tenable.

Three years after Strasbourg

The administrative request is being filed three years after the European Court of Human Rights ruled, in Buhuceanu and Others v. Romania, that Romania’s failure to provide any form of legal recognition for same-sex couples violates Article 8 of the European Convention. The 2023 ruling required Romania to introduce civil partnerships or some equivalent framework. Three years on, nothing has been introduced. The case is in the enhanced supervision procedure at the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the highest-pressure category for non-compliance, and Romania has been periodically asked for status updates that amount to “no progress.”

What ACCEPT’s May 13 filing does is open a second front. Buhuceanu pressures Romania to legislate. Cupriak-Trojan pressures Romania to administer — to start running its civil registers in conformity with EU law without waiting for parliament to act. The administrative route can move faster than the legislative route, and unlike the ECHR process, the EU has direct enforcement tools available: infringement proceedings, financial penalties, and, in the most extreme case, suspension of EU funds.

The political backdrop

The filing comes during a moment of unusual political openness in Romania. PSD leader Sorin Grindeanu has publicly committed that if his party forms the next government, he will implement the ECHR ruling and move to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other countries. President Nicușor Dan, elected in 2025 on a pro-EU platform, has signaled support for compliance with both rulings. The far-right AUR party opposes both, and the Orthodox Church remains a vocal opponent of any recognition framework.

ACCEPT’s strategy with the administrative request is to make the question concrete. The list of plaintiffs includes couples married in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and Portugal who are now living in Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, and Iași. They are not asking Romania to invent a new institution. They are asking Romania to apply the rule it already applies to every opposite-sex couple in the same situation. The Ombudsperson, Renate Weber, attended the May 13 event and gave the campaign her public support.

What happens next

If the Ministry of Internal Affairs refuses the request — the expected outcome — ACCEPT and the plaintiff couples will file in administrative court. Romanian administrative courts have already shown willingness to apply EU law over conflicting national provisions, and the November 2025 CJEU ruling gives them direct grounds to do so. If the administrative courts also refuse, the next preliminary reference can go back to the Court of Justice — and the answer there is no longer in doubt.

For couples in Romania, the practical effect of a successful outcome would be substantial. Civil-status transcription unlocks inheritance, hospital visitation, joint property ownership, immigration status for non-EU spouses, parental recognition for children, and tax filing as a family unit. None of those are abstractions. They are the daily logistics of living together legally.

The thirty-day clock on the administrative response runs until mid-June. The first court filings, if they become necessary, will come in early summer. For a country that has spent three years doing nothing in response to Strasbourg, the May 13 filing is the first time a queue of Romanian couples has shown up at the door of the state with an EU-law demand and the documentation to back it up.