Same-sex couples in Croatia will be able to jointly access an assessment of adoptive parents and must not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation, according to a ruling by the High Administrative Court of Croatia rejecting an appeal by the competent Ministry to the ruling of the Administrative Court in Zagreb from April 2021, which was supposed to provide life partners Mladen Kozic and Ivo Segota with access to the assessment procedure for adoption, was announced today at a press conference in Zagreb.

The two boys Kozic and Segota applied to the social care center six years ago with the desire to become homeowners and adoptive parents. Their requests were duly received, but then in two proceedings they were rejected only because they were in a life partnership. After a long legal battle in 2020, they successfully became hosts of two children.

The first-instance administrative court ruled last year that they could also become adoptive parents, and following an appeal by the ministry, the Supreme Administrative Court's ruling finally removed all dilemmas.

-Our story with the adoption was adopted in 2016 when we were rejected by the system because we are a same-sex couple in a life partnership. The court odyssey lasted six years. Our six years are nothing compared to the six years of the lives of the children we could have adopted then. Children who did not have the kind of animals we had when we were growing up. Six lost years of those children go to the soul of politics which in the name of defending the so-called "Traditional values ​​were ready to trample on the right of the family for children that society has forgotten," said Segota and Kozic.

- For the last two years, our family has been breathing and living with two children that we have adopted. Their experiences in kindergarten, at school, in football, taekwondo, birthday parties with our friends, trips, picnics, joint preparation of a grenade, gardening in our yard, caring for our dogs and kittens, the inevitable reading of good night stories… All that it would not exist if we did not dare to fight the windmills. Our great wish is to adopt the children we have adopted and for whom we have cared day and night for the last two years. From happiness because of the first Fridays at school or our first bicycle to sleepless nights because of the temperature, from laughter to tears, we live together and we are each other in the world. If it is not a family, then we do not know what that family is, add Ivo and Mladen.

According to the Rainbow Families Association, this verdict has far-reaching consequences for the rights of LGBTI people and same-sex marriage in the Republic of Croatia, because with it the life partners in Croatia are practically equal in rights as the spouses. The court rejected the Ministry's argument that same-sex marriages should not be allowed to be considered as adoptive parents for the purpose of "protecting the best interests of the child".