Stéphane Chapin & Bertrand Charpentier v. France

Same-sex marriage

(Application No. 40183/07), 27 October 2009 

Find Court’s judgement here in French.

• The applicants, a same-sex couple, complained that the French authorities’ refusal to allow them to contract marriage violated Article 12 and 14 of the Convention.
• ILGA-Europe, together with FIDH, ICJ and AIRE Centre submitted the following:
  • There is need for guidance on whether “family life” in Art. 8 should be interpreted as including same-sex couples. According to the interveners Karner v. Austria implies that same-sex couples (without children) enjoy “family life”. Furthermore, national courts in European and other democratic societies have treated unmarried same-sex couples (without children) as families.
  • The interveners also submitted that if the European Convention does not yet require equal access to legal marriage for same-sex couples, it is indirect discrimination based on sexual orientation to limit a particular right or benefit to married different-sex couples, but provide no means to qualify for same-sex couples. There also is a growing consensus in European and other democratic societies that same-sex couples must be provided with some means of qualifying for rights or benefits attached to marriage.
• The European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgement on 9 June 2016.
• It reiterated its findings in the case of Schalk & Kopf v Austria that Article 12 of the Convention does not impose an obligation on the respondent Government to grant a same-sex couple access to marriage.