Three Years After Strasbourg Ordered Romania to Recognize Same-Sex Couples, Bucharest Has Done Nothing
On May 23, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Romania had violated the rights of 21 same-sex couples by refusing to give their relationships any legal status. Three years on, Romania still has no civil partnership law — and the Council of Europe is running out of patience.
Three years ago this month, the European Court of Human Rights handed down one of the clearest LGBTQ+ rights rulings in its modern history. The case, Buhuceanu and Others v. Romania, was brought by 21 same-sex couples who had been refused any form of legal recognition by the Romanian state — no marriage, no civil union, no registered partnership, nothing. The Strasbourg court ruled unanimously on May 23, 2023 that Romania had violated their right to respect for private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Romania was ordered to put a legal framework in place.
Three years later, Romania has put nothing in place.
What the court actually said
Buhuceanu did not order Romania to legalize same-sex marriage. The court has consistently held that whether to extend marriage to same-sex couples is a matter for individual states. What the court did say — and this is where Romania’s continued refusal becomes legally indefensible — is that under the Convention, member states have a positive obligation to provide some legal framework that recognizes same-sex relationships and confers a meaningful core of rights: things like inheritance, the duty of mutual support, tax treatment, hospital visitation, and protection in case of separation.
The Romanian government appealed. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights rejected that appeal on September 25, 2023, making the Buhuceanu judgment final and definitive. Under Article 46 of the Convention, Romania is bound to comply.
It has not.
What Bucharest has actually done
The short answer is: nothing of substance. Then-Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu told reporters in late 2023 that “Romanian society is not ready” and that legal recognition of same-sex couples was “not one of my priorities.” Successive governments in 2024 and 2025 have repeated variations of the same line. The Save Romania Union (USR) and the Greens have introduced civil partnership bills in parliament; none has come close to passing. The two largest parties, the Social Democrats (PSD) and the Liberals (PNL), have both treated the issue as politically untouchable, and the rise of the far-right AUR has only made the calculation worse.
What’s striking about the Romanian situation is how isolated the country has become inside the EU on this question. Of the 27 EU member states, only Romania and Bulgaria still provide zero legal recognition of any same-sex relationship — no marriage, no partnership, no registered cohabitation. Italy has civil unions. Greece has marriage equality. Even traditionally conservative Catholic countries like Poland are inching toward registered partnerships. Romania is increasingly the outlier.
The Council of Europe enforcement question
Compliance with European Court of Human Rights judgments is supervised by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The Committee can publish increasingly pointed resolutions, can refer non-compliance back to the court, and — in extremis — can suspend a state’s voting rights. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in 2022 in part over its sustained refusal to comply with Strasbourg rulings.
Romania is nowhere near that level of consequence. But the Buhuceanu file is now in the Committee of Ministers’ “enhanced supervision” category, the more serious of the two compliance tracks. Each successive review cycle has produced sharper language. The April 2026 supervision report, drafted but not yet published, is expected to ask Romania to provide a concrete legislative timetable — something Bucharest has so far refused to do.
There is also the financial dimension. The court awarded each of the 21 applicants €9,500 in non-pecuniary damages, plus €9,510 in joint legal costs — modest sums on their own, but they establish the precedent for follow-on litigation. Other Romanian same-sex couples are now in the pipeline at Strasbourg, and the awards will compound.
What Romanian LGBTQ+ activists are saying
The picture inside Romania is, predictably, mixed. ACCEPT, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, has continued to push for the simplest possible response to Buhuceanu: a basic civil partnership law open to both same-sex and different-sex couples, modeled on the framework already operating in France or the Czech Republic. Activists are not asking for marriage. They are asking for the legal framework that the European Court of Human Rights ordered three years ago.
What they are running into is the same wall they have run into for two decades: a parliament that knows it is on the wrong side of European law and has decided to absorb the diplomatic friction rather than spend domestic political capital. As one Bucharest-based attorney we corresponded with put it, “The cost of doing nothing has been priced in. Until that cost goes up, nothing will move.”
The third anniversary of Buhuceanu falls on May 23. Don’t expect ceremonies. Do expect another wave of follow-on filings.
