His name doesn't ring a bell, yet his election made him the first homosexual head of state in the European Union. Edgars Rinkevics was elected president of Latvia on Wednesday by the Saeima, the local parliament. He will take office on 8 July. A historic decision and a beautiful coincidence of the calendar as the "month of pride" begins this Thursday.
The election of Edgars Rinkevics is historic. Beyond being the first homosexual EU head of state, he is only the second in the world. The first has also been appointed on the European continent: Paolo Rondelli, who was one of the two captains regent of the microstate of San Marino in 2022.
Luxembourg, Iceland and Belgium in the foreground
The European Union remains one of the most progressive territories in terms of LGBT representation at the head of a country or government. Currently, the EU has two openly gay heads of government: Leo Varadkar in Ireland and Xavier Bettel in Luxembourg.
The husband of the latter had also accompanied him in 2017 on the occasion of a meeting with Pope Francis, then a NATO summit in Brussels, during which he had posed alongside the first ladies present, including Brigitte Macron, Melania Trump or Emine Erdogan.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel received at the Vatican with her husband for the meeting of the 27 EU leaders and the Pope. Photo @ADS4AFP #AFP pic.twitter.com/DOI2aH6vDP
— Fanny Carrier (@fannycarrier) March 24, 2017
Before them, Icelandic lesbian Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was elected Prime Minister in 2009, a position she held for 4 years. She was the first LGBT person in the world to take the reins of an executive.
Not far from our borders, the Belgian government was also led by Elio Di Rupo from December 2011 to October 2014. In Serbia, Ana Brnabic has been Prime Minister since June 2017 and is still in office. Outside Europe, no state or government has ever had an openly gay person at its head.
In France, several ministers in office
While no French President or Prime Minister has ever declared himself LGBT, several political figures have openly spoken about their sexual orientation. One of the first, and especially one of the most media-savvy, was the former PS mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, who had expressed his homosexuality in 1998, in the program "Zone interdite" on M 6.
Since then, several politicians have spoken about their private lives and confirmed that they are in a relationship with people of the same sex. Within the government, Gabriel Attal, Clément Beaune, Franck Riester, Olivier Dussopt and more recently Sarah El Haïry have discussed their homosexuality publicly.