Portrait
Xavier Bettel
Born
3 March 1973Luxembourg
Politician, former Prime Minister of LuxembourgLuxembourg

Xavier Bettel

The first EU head of government to marry a same-sex partner while in office – and the introducer of marriage equality in Luxembourg.

Xavier Bettel grew up in Luxembourg, the son of a Luxembourgish father and a mother of Russian descent. He studied law in France and worked as a lawyer. He joined the liberal Democratic Party and was elected to parliament in 1999. In 2011 he became mayor of Luxembourg City.

In 2013, at 40, he became prime minister after the long era of Jean-Claude Juncker – one of the first openly gay heads of government in the world. His government introduced same-sex marriage and adoption in 2015, and in the same year Bettel married his partner, the architect Gauthier Destenay. He was the first leader of an EU country to marry a same-sex partner while in office.

In 2021 at an EU summit he gave a much-noticed emotional speech against a Hungarian law restricting information about homosexuality, describing his own experience of coming out.

He remained prime minister until 2023. Since then he has served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister, and is regularly ranked as Luxembourg’s most popular politician.

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