Ivan Novotný and Metod Špaček have been married since 2020. In Austria, that is. In Slovakia, where they live and are raising their son, the state still treats them as two unrelated men. Now they have taken the government to court, and they are not the only ones.

Right now, Slovakia’s refusal to recognise same-sex couples is being tested in three different places at once: a lawsuit against the civil registry, the Constitutional Court and the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Here’s what each case is about and why it matters.

Front 1: the couple suing the registry

We first wrote about Novotný and Špaček in August, when their request to register their Austrian marriage was turned down. According to AFP’s reporting via France 24, the refusal came in an August letter signed by Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok, after a nine-month wait the couple says was well past the legal deadline for such decisions.

In September, the two lawyers, both former foreign ministry officials, filed a lawsuit against the civil registry. No hearing date has been set.

Their argument rests on a November 2025 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which said every EU member state must recognise a same-sex marriage lawfully concluded in another member state. The ruling does not force any country to open marriage at home. It does say a marriage made elsewhere in the EU can’t simply vanish at the border.

“We don’t want to feel like second-class citizens,” Novotný told AFP. Špaček said: “The sheer politicisation of a routine legal act stunned me.”

Front 2: the Constitutional Court says no, for now

In September, Slovakia’s Constitutional Court rejected a petition MPs had filed back in 2023. As Rádio Slovakia International reported, the petition, signed by the whole SaS parliamentary group and several other opposition MPs, asked the court to strike down parts of the Family Act and related laws, and to extend family protection to families formed outside marriage. That would have opened the way to some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples.

The court had already thrown out one part of the petition, about Parliament’s failure to pass a partnership law, in April 2024. Its full written reasons for the new ruling had not been published when it was reported.

There is a twist. According to Martin Macko, executive director of the LGBTQ+ rights group Iniciatíva Inakosť, quoted by AFP, the court acknowledged in its ruling that European law obliges Slovakia to create some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples. If the published reasoning confirms that, the “no” comes with a big asterisk.

Front 3: the man who lost his citizenship for marrying his husband

The third case may be the most striking. According to a legal analysis by CEACLaw, a Slovak citizen living in the UK married his male partner there and later became a British citizen. When he asked the Slovak Embassy in London to keep his Slovak citizenship, he was told he had already lost it, and with it his EU citizenship, and was ordered to hand back his Slovak identity documents.

Slovak law has an exception for people who take a foreign nationality through marriage. The Interior Ministry refused to apply it, reasoning that Slovak law only recognises marriage between a man and a woman.

On 1 July 2026, the Constitutional Court paused his complaint, and in August it referred a question to the CJEU: does EU law stop a country from stripping someone of citizenship after a same-sex marriage abroad, when an opposite-sex marriage would have protected them? Luxembourg’s answer could reach far beyond one man.

The government isn’t moving

Prime Minister Robert Fico has been clear. “The registration of same-sex marriages is not possible… as it is non-existent under Slovak law,” he said in June, as quoted by AFP.

Slovakia’s constitution has defined marriage as “a union between man and woman” since 2014. A 2025 amendment went further: it recognises only two sexes, says sex cannot be changed, limits adoption to married couples with rare exceptions, and declares that Slovakia’s sovereignty over “cultural and ethical questions” should override EU law. AFP reports the European Commission launched legal action against Slovakia over those changes in November 2025.

Why this matters

These cases are about more than paperwork. Public support for equal rights in Slovakia is 35 percent, according to the latest Eurobarometer cited by AFP, among the lowest in the EU. In 2022, two men were shot dead in front of a Bratislava gay bar by the son of a prominent extreme-right party member.

Elections are due next year, and Fico is seeking a fifth term. Novotný told AFP that if he wins, “LGBTQ people would not be safe”, and the couple say they may leave Slovakia with their son. Other couples are weighing their own cases, including a possible complaint to the European Court of Human Rights.

The hopeful part: every one of these cases puts the question in front of judges, not just politicians. EU law has already said marriages can cross borders. The next rulings will show whether Slovakia’s constitution can stop them.