Extending rights, responsibilities and status to same-sex families: trends across Europe

K. Waaldijk

The substantial recognition of same-sex cohabitation dates back to the 1970s, when Sweden and the Netherlands became the first European countries where informally cohabiting same-sex partners were recognised for more than just one or two legal issues. Denmark and Norway followed in the 1980s, and many more countries from the 1990s. The next step of legal recognition was the introduction of registered partnership, which started in 1989 in Denmark, while the opening up of marriage started in 2001 (in the Netherlands). Both registered partnership and same-sex marriage have become a remarkably fast trend among European countries. This trend has been the strongest among countries that are part of the European Economic Area (the EEA, consisting of the 28 European Union countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein), but it is not limited to these countries. A new interactive legal database (covering 21 of the 31 EEA countries), makes it possible to describe this trend in much more detail. This database resulted from one of the many research projects in the large EU-funded "FamiliesAndSocieties" project. The legal survey focussed on the three main legal family formats that different European countries have been making available - or not - to same-sex and/or different-sex couples (marriage, registered partnership, cohabitation). It used a