registered partnerships. Prime Minister Donald Tusk (PO) announced that the law on registered partnerships would be passed at the beginning of the next term of the Sejm, but Speaker of the Sejm Grzegorz Schetyna (PO) said that a vote would not be put to Parliament during that legislative term. However, after receiving a petition in favour of the registered partnership bill signed by 23,500 people, Speaker Schetyna declared that he would probably submit the bill for its first reading in Parliament after 10 July 2011. Krzysztof Tyszkiewicz, spokesman of the PO parliamentary group, announced that the party would support the SLD bill, but only after the parliamentary elections in October 2011. In July 2011, the Social and Family Policy Commission and the Justice and Human Rights Commission held a first reading of the registered partnership bill. Out of the 67 (32 PO, 23 PiS, 7 SLD, 2 PSL, 3 non-attached) members of the committees, 29 voted in favour, 10 voted against and 3 abstained. After the bill passed its first reading in the Sejm, the Supreme Court of Poland expressed its opinion on 9 October 2011, before the elections. The Court undermined any further progress of the bill, highlighting numerous legal deficiencies. It also stated that the registration of cohabiting opposite-sex couples was incompatible with Article 18 of the Polish Constitution. Regarding the relationships of same-sex couples, it stated that the admissibility and scope of any statutory regulation required an analysis taking into account international legal obligations, and considering the implications of recent judgments by the European Court of Human Rights. According to Professor Miroslaw Wyrzykowski, head of the Department of Human Rights at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Law, and a former judge of the Polish Constitutional Court, the Constitution requires the introduction of civil partnerships. In the end, the bill was never voted upon by Parliament and therefore expired. 2011–2015 After the parliamentary elections of 9 October 2011, Janusz Palikot, the leader of the Palikot Movement (RP), declared that a bill on civil partnerships would be one of the first draft laws submitted to the new Parliament. Leszek Miller, head of the SLD parliamentary grouping, announced that they would reintroduce the same bill as had been introduced in the previous parliaments. Rafał Grupiński, vice president of the PO parliamentary grouping, announced that its members would have a free vote on the draft law. Stanisław Żelichowski, head of