The Latvian parliament on Wednesday chose Edgars Rinkevics as the Baltic country’s next president, after incumbent Egils Levits chose not to run for a second term. Rinkevics will be the first openly homosexual head of an EU member state.
Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins announced that Rinkevics had emerged victorious after three rounds of voting. He secured 52 votes out of 100 members of the Seimas, according to media reports in Riga.
The 49-year-old civil servant has been Latvia’s foreign minister since 2011.
He revealed his homosexuality in 2014, the first senior official to do so in the country of almost 1.9 million.
Rinkevics is technically the second European head of state to be openly gay. The distinction of being the first goes to Paolo Rondelli, who served as captain-regent of San Marino – an independent principality on the Italian peninsula – in 2022. San Marino is not an EU member,
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