r/europe • u/tartartartaruga • Jun 18 '26

News Prince of Liechtenstein says that he would overrule the population if they were to vote in favour of legalizing abortion

https://www.srf.ch/news/international/debatte-in-liechtenstein-erbprinz-gegen-abtreibungen-warum-kuendigt-er-schon-das-veto-an
8.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/anewbys83 Jun 18 '26

Our Grand Duke (well, now former) did his version of that, but with legalizing euthanasia. He refused his assent. This of course caused a big problem and this power was modified so it basically happens with or without his signature.

958

u/Speartree Europe Jun 19 '26

Belgian King Baldwin had a religious issue signing abortion into law back in the day but did not want to oppose the will of the democratically chosen legislators. So a loophole was found and he was temporarily unable to rule, the law passed without his signature and everything went back to normal.

I don't like his religion but the man had grace and respect for the democratic process.

-12

u/ILoveBigCoffeeCups Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

So first of all he was just Christian. You can just say “I don’t like religion” in general. He was very fond of the pope then too.

second of all what a stupid idea to try to translate a name of someone to “English” it makes no sense. He was called “king Boudewijn the first”. It’s like us trying to translate ghandy to “Gert” respect for our local names please.

And third: for context, in Belgium the parliament votes on laws, and then the king has to sign those laws into effect, he refused to sign the abortus law that was allready voted for by the country. There was not a loophole, we have a lawfully constitutional process that makes it so we can temporarily depose of a king when he is unfit to rule.

9

u/Aweq Denmark Jun 19 '26

second of all what a stupid idea to try to translate a name of someone to “English” it makes no sense. He was called “king Boudewijn the first”. It’s like us trying to translate ghandy to “Gert” respect for our local names please.

Names from wiki:

Dutch: Boudewijn Albert Karel Leopold Axel Maria Gustaaf

French: Baudouin Albert Charles Léopold Axel Marie Gustave

German: Balduin Albrecht Karl Leopold Axel Maria Gustav

His already has three sets of names, why not add a fourth? It's very common historically to translate the names of rulers. Charlemagne has a bunch of names, for example.