EU Court Ruling on Same-Sex Unions

From "EU backs gay man's pension rights," BBC, April 1, 2008:

A gay man in Germany may be entitled to his dead partner's pension following a ruling by the highest court in the EU.

[The man's] partner died in 2005 but the pension fund refused him a widower's pension and the case was sent to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The court ruled that refusing a pension was direct discrimination if the partnership was comparable to marriage...

The court based its ruling on an EU directive which states that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Although German law considers only heterosexual unions as marriage, the ruling makes it clear that any country in the EU that gives same-sex couples rights equivalent to marriage should treat the two as comparable...

[One of the man's lawyers] said the ruling would have significant repercussions for the UK and Scandinavia where same-sex partners had "mirror institutions" to marriage, rather than French-style civil contracts...

GAY MARRIAGES IN THE EU

• Full marriage recognised: Spain, Netherlands, Belgium
• Legal partnerships similar to marriage: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, UK, Czech
  Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Finland, Portugal
• Civil contracts: France, Luxembourg
• No provision: Austria, Baltic states, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Romania,
  Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia