Portrait

Ulrike Lunacek

Born: 26 May 1957Krems, Austria

PoliticianAustria

Ulrike Lunacek

Austria’s first openly lesbian member of parliament became Vice-President of the European Parliament and a leading voice for LGBTI rights in Europe.

Ulrike Lunacek grew up in Lower Austria and studied interpreting in Innsbruck. She worked for development organisations and as a journalist and became active in the Green Party.

In 1999 she was elected to the Austrian National Council, becoming the first openly lesbian member of the Austrian parliament. In 2009 she moved to the European Parliament, where she served as co-president of the Intergroup on LGBTI Rights and as rapporteur on Kosovo. A report she drafted, calling for an EU roadmap against homophobia and discrimination, was adopted by the Parliament in 2014. From 2014 to 2017 she was a Vice-President of the European Parliament.

In 2017 she led the Austrian Greens into the national election, in which the party failed to enter parliament for the first time since 1986. Lunacek then withdrew from politics.

In 2020 she returned as state secretary for culture in the government of Sebastian Kurz, but resigned after a few months amid criticism of the government’s handling of the cultural sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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