There are moments when a liberal democracy must decide whether it is serious about its own laws. The recent suggestion by Javed Aslam, representing members of the Pakistani community in Greece, that restrictions on marriage between close blood relatives should be reconsidered is one of those moments.
This is not an obscure technical adjustment or an administrative oversight. It is a proposal to reopen a settled civil boundary in order to validate a communal preference. That should alarm anyone who understands what civil law is for.
Marriage between first cousins may be culturally accepted in parts of Pakistan. It predates Islam and grew out of kinship-based systems where land, wealth, and loyalty were consolidated within extended families. In those contexts, it may once have served a structural purpose. However Europe is not organised on that model.
European civil codes evolved deliberately away from clan-based consolidation and toward individual autonomy under uniform law. Restrictions on close-kin marriage were not adopted casually. They were shaped by medical knowledge, ethical development, and a conscious shift toward protecting the individual over the collective family unit. To treat such boundaries as casually negotiable is reckless.
Modern genetics has demonstrated that consanguineous marriage increases the likelihood of inherited disorders. The risk is not catastrophic in every case, but it is real and measurable. In societies with publicly funded healthcare, that reality matters. Lawmakers do not have the luxury of pretending that foreseeable medical consequences are irrelevant. But the deeper issue is not genetic; It is power.
In tightly structured family systems, consent is rarely ever a simple signature on a document. It is shaped over years within hierarchies that reward compliance and punish resistance. Removing legal friction in such contexts does not expand freedom. It consolidates internal pressure. Norway has introduced restrictions citing concerns about forced unions. Denmark is considering similar safeguards. These are not acts of cultural hostility. They are acknowledgements that autonomy on paper does not always translate into autonomy in practice.
Italy, for example, learned this lesson the hardest way. In 2021, Saman Abbas was murdered after resisting a forced marriage within her family. The tragedy was not about abstract legal theory. It was about the limits of protection when collective expectation overwhelms individual will. When legislators entertain proposals that lower structural guardrails, they must confront that reality honestly.
Hundreds of girls in Italy and across Europe from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds are withdrawn from school at a young age and taken abroad for marriages arranged by their families, often to close relatives. Many return to lives shaped not by choice but by obligation, their education interrupted and their autonomy curtailed. This is not about stigmatising anyone. It is about refusing to hollow out civil protections under the banner of inclusion.
An individual adult who freely chooses to marry a cousin can navigate existing legal complexities, if such a marriage is indeed illegal in their state of residence. However the point is whether the state should recalibrate its civil code because a community representative believes a collective norm deserves statutory recognition. Civil law is not a cultural bargaining chip. It is a protective architecture. It exists to strengthen the individual’s position when faced with collective pressure, including pressure from within the family.
Democracies are obliged to protect shared legal standards from erosion. Equal treatment does not mean every communal practice must be translated into legislative accommodation. Law reform is serious business. It consumes public resources, redefines precedent, and signals priorities.
Entertaining such a proposal lightly sends precisely the wrong signal. It suggests that settled boundaries are open to revision whenever a sufficiently organised constituency demands validation. A confident democracy does not renegotiate its civil code to demonstrate sensitivity. Tolerance without judgment is not virtue; It is abdication.
If liberal societies cannot distinguish between individual liberty and collective pressure, they risk empowering precisely the internal hierarchies they claim to moderate. Guardrails exist for a reason. Removing them to appear inclusive is not progress. It is carelessness.
Some lines were drawn deliberately. They should not be erased casually.
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Matteo Bianchi
Matteo Bianchi is a geopolitical analyst and author. With a distinguished career in information and security in government and the corporate world, Bianchi has lived in 4 continents and worked in several verticals. He is currently retired and writes on geopolitics, AI and cybersecurity.
