Mixed marriages increasingly common for Poles

According to figures from the Central Statistical Office (GUS) relating to couples married in Poland itself, over 4,000 Poles married foreigners in 2014.

Almost 3,000 of these couples involved a Polish bride and a foreign groom.

603 of the husbands were British, while there were 342 German grooms and 211 Italian ones.

Although most of the marriages between Polish women and foreigners were with EU citizens, there were also unions with citizens of more distant countries, including Mauritius, Togo, Uganda and Gambia.

Over 1,000 Polish men married foreigners on Polish soil in 2014 (almost three times less than Polish women). Of these, Polish men most frequently married Ukrainians (505), Russians (140) and Belarusians (118).

Data from the Government Population Council records that between 1990 and 2000 about 45,000 marriages between Poles and foreigners took place in Poland.

However, between 2001 and 2014 there were 74,000 such marriages.

Marriages on foreign soil

Although data relating to marriages of Poles on foreign soil is incomplete, in 2014 there were 17, 800 Poles who registered their foreign marriages in Poland too. Of those 11,300 were with foreigners.

Between 1990 and 2002 there were 70,000 to 80,000 such marriages. However, in the period of 2009 to 2014 alone there were over 71,600 such unions. (nh/rk)

Source: Dziennik Gazeta Prawna

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