Same-sex marriage in Belgium 14 December and published on 23 December 1999 made the Act of statutory cohabitation go into effect on 1 January 2000. During 1999, the PS (French-speaking Social Democrats) and Ecolo (French-speaking Greens) also announced they agreed to legalise same-sex marriage. At that point, the only remaining party in Government that opposed same-sex marriage was the French-speaking liberal PRL (later merged into MR), mainly because it was opposed to adoption rights for same-sex couples. PRL agreed not to block same-sex marriage if adoption rights are excluded. As the first same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was performed on 1 April 2001, the
Same-sex marriage in Malta act defines cohabitation as between two people, regardless of gender. President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca signed the act into law on 7 April. The law went into effect on July 1, 2017. Before the 2008 elections, the Malta Gay Rights Movement sent a survey to all major political parties asking them for their views on the recognition of same-sex unions. None of the parties supported same-sex marriage, however all of them supported recognition of same-sex unions to some extent. The governing Nationalist Party supported extending some rights to cohabitating same-sex couples. The Labour Party supported recognising "same-sex families and partnerships", although