Katarzyna Kotula, Minister of Equality, said on Tuesday that the decision on whether the project on partnerships will be governmental or parliamentary will be made within a week or two. She emphasized that she would continue to convince PSL MPs to support this regulation.
Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense, president of the Polish People’s Party, was asked on Wednesday for his opinion on the draft law on civil partnerships, which is being worked on by the Minister of Equality Katarzyna Kotula.
The president of PSL declared that I would not vote for the status of marriages for homosexual unions, adoption of children and adoption. “I will be against it, I have always said it clearly,” he said. He stressed that this was his personal opinion. He added that issues of inheritance and access to medical information by persons entering into a civil partnership need to be considered.
Kotula, asked about these words by journalists on Wednesday, said that the Act on civil partnerships is an act on dignity and human rights, but also on security, for which the head of the Ministry of National Defense is responsible. She emphasized that rainbow families also have the right to it.
“The Polish People’s Party does not want to agree to the fact that in a situation where two women live together, raise a child and one of them is the biological mother, the other woman, i.e. a person close to the child who raises the child, who often also financially participates in the upbringing of this child, had any right to decide what classes the child could attend. Kosiniak-Kamysz and the entire PSL, as I understand it, do not want the other person to have the right to access medical information, and This is what these families are specifically facing,” Kotula said.
She added that the Left had recently tried to convince its coalition partner PSL to support this project. “I am counting on the common sense of my colleagues, especially from PSL, because within the Third Way there is Poland 2050, which agrees to this project,” Kotula said.
She emphasized that she was ready to submit the project both in the government and parliamentary formula. “We are in the starting blocks, I have completed the task assigned to me by Prime Minister Donald Tusk,” she emphasized.
At the same time, she noted that she was still ready to talk. “I will consistently try to convince my colleagues, but of course I will have to give myself a deadline, I think it is a matter of a week or two and we will make a decision. If we submit a parliamentary bill, I come with a parliamentary bill and submit it to the Sejm, it is ready, it’s on my desk. If I manage to convince my colleagues from PSL, we will proceed with the government project,” Kotula said.
According to the ministry, it will be a mistake if the government does not come up with a project on this matter. “This will probably also affect our view of other projects presented by Third Way ministers, including PSL ministers, because I don’t think Prime Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz can imagine that the decision not to firmly support the government project will not will remain unanswered,” Kotula said.
As Kotula previously reported, the starting point for work on the act were projects created in recent years. Their proposed regulations were submitted to the Sejm in 2018 by Nowoczesna and two years later by Left. They included, among others: provisions on: the right to provide the partner with information about the health condition, joint tax settlement, first-line inheritance, survivor’s pension and care allowance in the case of caring for the partner, and the right to adopt the partner’s child.
Representatives of non-governmental organizations representing LGBT+ people drew Kotula’s attention to similar issues. During a meeting at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in mid-March, they said that the law should include, among others: the possibility of adopting a partner’s child, the possibility of joint tax settlement and regulating the issue of inheritance by partners – Mirosława Makuchowska, director of the Campaign Against Homophobia, told PAP after the meeting.