A same-sex couple are suing authorities in Slovakia for refusing to register their Austrian marriage, testing whether a landmark EU court ruling can turn recognition abroad into legal security at home. Their fight exposes a clash between European obligations and national restrictions – and what that means for LGBTQ+ people living under Robert Fico’s populist-nationalist government. Ivan Novotný, 31, and Metod Špaček, 51, married in Austria in 2020, but six years on, their marital status at home remains unrecognised.
There is no same-sex marriage in Slovakia, a socially conservative, predominantly Catholic country; neither is there any form of civil partnership. But Novotný and Špaček, who are both lawyers and former diplomats, are not asking for that. They want the Slovakian authorities to recognise a marriage that was concluded legally in another EU country – something the bloc’s top court has said is mandatory for all EU members.
We have a lovely life here in Bratislava, in Slovakia,” Novotný said. He added: “She put me down on the report as ‘husband’ and gave me all your [Špaček] medical information. The problem is: that was because she was nice, not because she had to do it.
If someone wanted to make trouble for us, they could do it. Jakub Cupriak-Trojan and Mateusz Trojan had challenged the Mazovia provincial governor’s refusal to recognise their German marriage. The court ruled that member states must recognise such marriages where couples had exercised their right to move and reside in another EU country, and created or strengthened family life there.
The European court of justice ruling does not require member states to allow same-sex weddings at home. The Slovakian authorities explained why Novotný and Špaček’s request to register their Austrian marriage had been turned down in a letter signed by the interior minister, Matúš Šutaj Eštok. That’s essentially it,” said Špaček, who served as chief of staff to the country’s liberal former president Zuzana Čaputová.
Across town, in the house his grandparents built on a hill overlooking the Danube, Marián Žáry Kukelka, 44, recalled his wedding to his partner, Ondrej, in 2023. The couple married in Hainburg an der Donau, an Austrian town visible from their terrace. Žáry Kukelka, a radio presenter for the public broadcaster STVR, is also suing Slovakian authorities.
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