Protest march in Bucharest calls on Parliament to legalize civil partnerships

A march in favor of the legal recognition of civil partnerships will take place in Bucharest on Saturday, October 31, starting at 12:00, departing from University Square, in front of the Bucharest National Theatre (TNB park), and heading towards Victory Square.

The march is backed by the Civil Partnership NOW movement, founded by the MozaiQ Association together with activist Aluziva.

Between February and May 2026, the movement collected more than 100,000 signatures in record time in support of the legal recognition of unmarried couples, both heterosexual and gay. Dozens of content creators, university professors, sociologists, singers, psychologists, and citizens from all social backgrounds joined the movement.

The signatures were delivered to the Chamber of Deputies on May 27, with confirmation that the petition had been registered.

Since then, five months have passed without any public response, according to the organizers of the protest, cited by G4Media.

The legal recognition of civil partnerships would allow partners the right to visit each other in hospital, to make medical decisions concerning one's partner, inheritance rights, survivor's pension and immigration rights, the choice of a joint property regime, the right to take out a joint bank loan, and the right to continue a rental agreement. No such rights exist as of now for unmarried couples.

According to the latest census, more than 360,000 unmarried couples currently live in Romania without any protection from the state. Moreover, according to a MozaiQ Barometer, more than 5.8 million Romanians support the legalization of civil partnerships.

In recent years, several courts, including the Romanian Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union, have ruled against Romania for failing to recognize unmarried couples.

"We have followed every step available to a citizen in a democracy: we asked, collected signatures, submitted them, and explained. The response was silence, and silence is not an answer. Civil partnership takes nothing away from anyone; it simply gives a couple the protection that the state owes them. We are taking to the streets because this is the only way left for us to be heard," said Alina Greavu, known as Aluziva, strategic director of the Civil Partnership NOW movement.

Civil Partnership NOW is a movement through which more than 90 civil society organizations in Romania, together with the more than 100,000 citizens who have signed the petition, are calling for the legal recognition of same-sex couples in Romania.