Background and summary Same-sex marriage has been legal in Belgium since 1 June 2003, making it the second country in the world to open marriage to same-sex couples, after the
Netherlands, and 9 days ahead of the
Canadian province of
Ontario. Legislation to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples was passed by both chambers of the Federal Parliament in November 2002 and January 2003 with the support of most political parties, and received
royal assent on 13 February 2003. In Belgian public discourse, same-sex marriage is commonly known as "marriage for all" or as "homomarriage". In the late 1990s, gay rights organisations in Belgium lobbied for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Belgian civil law did not explicitly require that two people be of opposite gender to be able to marry, as this was considered self-evident.
Private member's bills in the 1990s by Vlaams Blok senators to add this as an explicit requirement were never considered.
Passage of legislation in 2003 The election programmes of the
Socialist Party Differently (SP; Flemish Social Democrats),
Agalev (Flemish Greens) and the
Flemish Liberals and Democrats (VLD; Flemish Liberals) for the
13 June 1999 elections included the aim of legalising same-sex marriage. The
Verhofstadt I Government formed after the elections was made up of a coalition of liberal, socialist and green parties and excluded the long-dominant
Christian People's Party, who lost the elections due to the
Dioxin Affair. The coalition agreement included "implementing a full legal partnership scheme" as well as "immediately making the Act of 23 November 1998 enter into force", which had not been done yet. A royal order signed on 14 December and published on 23 December 1999 made the law on statutory cohabitation go into effect on 1 January 2000. In 1999, the
Socialist Party (PS; French-speaking Social Democrats) and
Ecolo (French-speaking Greens) also announced their support for the legalisation of same-sex marriage. At that point, the only remaining party in government that opposed same-sex marriage was the French-speaking
Liberal Reformist Party (PRL), which later merged into the
Reformist Movement (MR), mainly because it was opposed to
adoption rights for same-sex couples. PRL agreed not to block same-sex marriage if adoption rights were excluded. As the first
same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was performed on 1 April 2001, the Belgian Government, mostly under the lead of Minister of Health
Magda Aelvoet (Agalev), began considering it as well. On 22 June, the
Council of Ministers formally approved opening marriage to same-sex couples. In September, the largest opposition party, the Christian People's Party, held a party convention where they rebranded into
Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V), with a renewed party platform, including the aim of legalising same-sex marriage, put forward by their youth wing. However, the
Council of State issued a negative legal opinion on the bill on 30 November 2001, stating that "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman".
LGBT organisations and government ministers criticised the opinion and said they would proceed with the legislation. The Council of Ministers formally approved the government bill on 8 December 2001 and in second reading on 30 January 2002, and submitted it to the Chamber of Representatives on 14 March 2002, where it faced a Justice Committee overloaded with bills to consider. In May 2002, the government bill was withdrawn from the Chamber and instead introduced as a
private member's bill (which does not require opinions by the Council of State) in the
Senate by the group leaders of the majority parties, Jeannine Leduc (VLD),
Philippe Mahoux (PS),
Philippe Monfils (MR),
Myriam Vanlerberghe (SP), Marie Nagy (Ecolo) and Frans Lozie (Agalev). As Minister Aelvoet resigned on 28 August 2002 and
elections were to be held in June 2003, the fate of the bill was unclear. Some politicians also accused Philippe Monfils of deliberately stalling the bill. Nevertheless, new momentum was gained at the start of the new parliamentary year in October 2002. The Senate Justice Committee held hearings and voted 11–4 to approve the bill. It passed in the full Senate on 28 November 2002, with 46 votes to 15 and 4 abstentions, and on 30 January 2003 the bill passed the
Chamber of Representatives by 91 votes to 22 and 9 abstentions. The Flemish Liberals and Democrats, Christian Democratic and Flemish, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party Differently, Ecolo, Agalev and the
People's Union voted generally in favour except for several abstentions, whereas the Vlaams Blok and
National Front voted against, the
Humanist Democratic Centre voted against with several abstentions and the Reformist Movement voted mostly against.
King Albert II signed and
promulgated the bill on 13 February 2003. It was published in the
Belgian Official Gazette on 28 February and
came into force on 1 June. The first paragraph of article 143 of the Belgian Civil Code (Book I, Title V, Chapter I) now reads as follows: • in • in • in : (
Two persons of different sex or of the same sex may contract marriage.) officiating at the wedding of a same-sex couple in
Liège, 2013 The first female couple married on 6 June 2003 and the first male couple on 13 June 2003, both in
Kapellen near
Antwerp. In November 2003, opponents of same-sex marriage petitioned the
Arbitration Court to invalidate the law as unconstitutional. Their main argument held that treating fundamentally different situations the same way violated the equality principle of the
Constitution. In October 2004, the Arbitration Court, nowadays known as the Constitutional Court, rejected the request.
Subsequent changes Originally, Belgium allowed the marriages of foreign same-sex couples only if their country of origin also allowed these unions. A
circulaire issued by Minister of Justice
Laurette Onkelinx on 23 January 2004, however, permits any couple to marry in Belgium if at least one of the spouses has lived in the country for a minimum of three months. This was codified into the Code of Private International Law, which took effect on 1 October 2004. The same-sex marriage law did not permit
adoption by same-sex partners, and as birth within a same-sex marriage did not imply affiliation, the same-sex spouse of the biological parent had no way to become a legal parent. A proposal to permit adoption was approved 77–62 with 7 abstentions by the Chamber of Representatives on 1 December 2005, and 34–33 with 2 abstentions by the Senate on 20 April 2006. It received royal assent on 18 May and went into force on 30 June 2006. A legal inequality persisted for lesbian couples compared to heterosexual couples with regard to parentage; under article 135 of the Belgian Civil Code, the husband of a biological mother is automatically recognised as the child's legal father, but this was not the case for the wife of the mother in a same-sex union. To be recognised as the co-mother, she was required to complete an adoption procedure—a situation that accounted for the majority of adoption cases in Belgium. The
Di Rupo Government promised to address this disparity, and in 2014, as the
Netherlands had recently passed similar legislation, LGBT organisations pressured the government to act. In response, legislators worked to agree on a solution. A bill to this end was approved by the Senate on 3 April 2014 on a 48–2 vote with one abstention, and by the Chamber of Representatives on 23 April on a 114–10 vote with one abstention. The bill received royal assent by King
Philippe of Belgium on 5 May and went into effect on 1 January 2015. Since then, lesbian couples have been treated equally to heterosexual couples: the co-mother married to the biological mother is automatically recognised as a legal parent, and an unmarried partner can formally acknowledge the child at the civil registry. An equivalent legal framework for male same-sex couples has not yet been established, due to ongoing controversy surrounding
surrogacy.
Royal same-sex weddings In October 2021, the government confirmed that members of the
Belgian royal family may enter into same-sex marriages without having to forfeit the
crown, or lose their royal titles and privileges or their place in the line of succession. This followed similar announcements concerning other European royal families.
Statistics According to
Statistics Belgium, approximately 2,000 same-sex couples were married between June 2003 and December 2004 (874 in 2003 and 1,133 in 2004). This constituted 1.9 percent of the total number of marriages in Belgium during that period, with male couples accounting for about 58% of all same-sex marriages. The share of same-sex marriages among all marriages differs from region to region. In 2024, almost 3.7% of marriages in
Brussels, 3.1% in
Flanders and 2.9% in
Wallonia were same-sex marriages. The province with the lowest rate was
Flemish Brabant (2.5%) and the one with the highest rate was
West Flanders (3.4%). Solemnizations of same-sex marriages are also possible in the
Old Catholic Church of Belgium. The
Catholic Church opposes same-sex marriage and does not allow its priests to officiate at such marriages. In February 2010, Father Germain Dufour, a former
Ecolo parliamentarian,
blessed the marriage of a same-sex couple in a Catholic church in
Liège, provoking much controversy in Catholic circles. In September 2022, Roman Catholic bishops in Flanders issued a document permitting same-sex unions to be blessed in their churches. The document allows for a ritual which includes a prayer and a final benediction in front of family and friends. It emphasised that while such blessings did not alter the Catholic doctrine on "sacramental marriage," the move would allow the Church to be "pastorally close to homosexual persons" and a "welcoming [place] that excludes no one." In December 2023, the
Holy See published
Fiducia supplicans, a declaration allowing
Catholic priests to
bless couples who are not considered to be
married according to church teaching, including the blessing of same-sex couples. The
Bishop of Antwerp,
Johan Bonny, welcomed the declaration, saying, "It helps us move forward." ==Public opinion==