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
Recognition of same-sex unions in Greece brought to Greek or European courts. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) under George Papandreou, then in opposition, presented in April 2006, a legislative proposal for the recognition of unmarried couples, homosexual and heterosexual, following the French example of the Civil solidarity pact. However, according to some LGBT groups, the proposal's controversial terminology made little headway on LGBT rights and PASOK's proposed partnership banned same-sex couples from adopting. In November 2008, PASOK once again submitted a draft law on cohabitation agreements, even though it made no progress in the Parliament. Responding to government proposals in 2008 to introduce legal rights for