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Belgium appoints Europe’s first transgender deputy PM
Wonderful news from the Dutch Trans Network (TNN) on facebook
“The Belgian Petra de Sutter is Europe’s prime minister who is also a trans woman! Great news:
Now that we finally have a federal government and the names of the ministers and deputy prime ministers are known, it appears that we (also) have a transgender deputy prime minister for the first time, namely Petra De Sutter (Green). In 2011 our country had the first openly gay prime minister, Elio Di Ruppo.
De Sutter, 57, became the first openly trans woman in the Belgian Senate in 2014. Yesterday she became the first transgender deputy prime minister of our country. De Sutter was also given the portfolio of the Minister of Public Enterprises and Civil Service. In the 2019 elections, De Sutter was elected Member of the European Parliament with 143,377 preference votes, making history twice, first as the first green chair of the Internal Market and Consumer Affairs Committee, and secondly as the first trans woman to hold that position.
About her new position as Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, she says: “Together with the government team and all civil servants, I want to contribute to the modernization and digitization of the government. I am proud to become Minister for Civil Service and Public Companies. The corona crisis showed that we need a powerful government to safeguard the common good ”. On Twitter she wrote on Wednesday evening: “Last night I gave the green light for the new government with 1000 other members, now I can do what is necessary with that government to relaunch our country and work on a new future for all Belgians.
De Sutter is also professor by special appointment in gynecology at Ghent University, head of the department of Reproductive Medicine at Ghent University Hospital, and member of the European Parliament for the Groen party since 2019. In the Senate she became a member of the Commission for Institutional Affairs and as a senator she was also delegated to the Council of Europe, where she became a member of the Social Affairs Committee and Vice-Chair of the Migration Committee. In 2019 she became party leader for Green in the European elections, and since the same year she is also a municipal councilor in Horebeke (East Flanders).
In 2014 she came out of the transgender closet. In 2016 she wrote a book about her life entitled: ‘(Surviving) my struggle as a trans woman doctor & politician’, in collaboration with Knack journalist Elke Lahousse, the book was published in 2016 by Manteau publishing house. In 2016 she was awarded ‘Strafste Gentenaar’ in the academic category, in the same year she won the ‘Prijs De Maakbare Mens’. In 2017 Charlie Magazine named De Sutter as one of the top 25 influential Belgians.
Topics for which she previously stood up in politics: LGBT rights, surrogacy, independence from clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry, women’s rights and the protection of public health against harmful hormone-disrupting substances in plastic, cosmetics, etc. years in on the health risks of endocrine disruptors. She also regularly gets involved in bioethics discussions such as surrogacy and commercial egg donation. In 2019 she moved from the Senate and the Council of Europe to the European Parliament. Her authentic style and file knowledge ensure that she is respected and trusted across party lines. As brand-new Deputy Prime Minister, she says she will certainly also place ‘green’ accents”
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