The Greek Parliament gave the ‘green light’ this Thursday to the llegalization of same-sex marriagethus becoming the sixteenth country in the European Union to recognize equality in civil unions.

“This is a milestone for Human Rights that reflects today’s Greece: a progressive and democratic country, passionately committed to European values,” reacted the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on the social network X.

Specifically, the bill has been approved by 176 votes in favor – with the support of the opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) – and 76 against, while there have been a total of 46 absent deputies, according to the newspaper ‘Kathimerini’.

During his speech before the plenary session, Mitsotakis defended that the measure “does justice” to people of the same sex and makes “visible people who were previously invisible.” “This bill aims to unite and not divide,” she added.

Representative Andonis Samarás, of the government’s New Democracy party, was the protagonist of one of the most tense moments of the session when he stated that homosexual marriage “does not constitute a human right” nor is it guaranteed by International Law.

“Human Rights are too serious an issue to trivialize them in this way. And any abusive interpretation belittles them. A human right is not what one intends to claim,” he assured, according to the newspaper ‘To Vima’. In this sense, she has argued that the measure represents a “regression” of the right to the family, since minors have the right to have parents of both sexes, and an “abolition” of the nuclear family model.

Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis introduced a series of reforms to advance LGBTQ rights after coming to power in 2019, with the legalization of same-sex marriage part of the program.