The prime minister of Luxembourg has become the first gay European Union leader to enter into a same-sex union, after getting married in a low-key ceremony on Saturday.
Prime Minister Xavier Bettel is being held up as a symbol of social change and the growing acceptance of homosexuality across the continent.
The 42-year-old centre-right politician, who became premier in 2013, married his partner Gauthier Destenay, a Belgian architect.
The wedding comes just months after the conservative Roman Catholic duchy legalised gay weddings.
Bettel worse a nave blue suit as he said his ‘I dos’, while his partner dressed in a dark grey suit, at the ceremony held at the Luxembourg town hall.
The happy pair held hands as they arrived at the venue, to the applause of the around 100 well-wishers. “Thank you to all Luxembourgers,”said Bettel, after the ceremony, as the crowd threw rice and confetti over the newlyweds.
Bettel is only the second gay leader in the world to wed their partner, and the first in the 28-nation EU.
Iceland’s PMJohanna Sigurdardottir became the first when she married her partner, a writer, in 2010.
Image: Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel waves as he poses with his partner, Belgian Gauthier Destenay (left), after their wedding ceremony at Luxembourg’s city hall. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters