UKRAINE, Jan. 27 — The new civil code registered by Ukraine’s parliament chairman, Ruslan Stefanchuk, contradicts EU accession requirements, says the statement by Ukraine’s civil society organizations that advocate for human rights in general and the rights of LGBTQ+ people in particular, published by ZMINA.

According to the signatories, some amendments to the Civil Code make it impossible for a court to recognize the existence of family relations between persons of the same sex.

The bill also proposes to nullify marriages with a person who is going through (or has undergone, the wording is unclear) juridical gender reassignment. 

Ukraine, in its commitments under the EU accession negotiations, should have adopted registered partnership legislation by the third quarter of 2025, but has instead stalled on advancing the bills that would have accomplished this, notes ILGA Europe, reporting on a draft Civil Code bill.

As well as NGOs in their statement, ILGA Europe notes that the bill annuls existing Ukrainian court recognitions of same-sex couples as a family, defining “de facto family unions” as explicitly those between people of “opposite sex.” 

The new Civil Code, registered as a bill #14394 in Verkhovna Rada, according to the statements of civil organizations, conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights, the case law of the ECtHR, EU negotiating requirements under Chapter 23, the approved Roadmap on the Rule of Law, the positions of the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership, which include the protection of human rights. 

In their statement, civil society organizations ask Parliament to halt the advancement of the draft Civil Code in its current wording and support it only after its provisions “fully comply with Ukraine’s obligation for EU integration.”

They also appeal to Parliament’s Committee on Legal Policy, asking to formulate a legal opinion that necessitates revisions of the draft civil code and to revisit the draft for it to be compliant with the ECHR and, also, Ukraine’s negotiating obligations to the EU.

ILGA-Europe’s Advocacy Director, Katrin Hugendubel, says that, if passed through Parliament and signed into law, this bill will become “one of the most restrictive legal frameworks for same-sex couples in the EU and the EU accession region,” second only to Georgia, which adopted legislation targeting the rights of LGBTQ+ people in 2024. 

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