Serbia gets its first female – and gay – prime minister

A gay woman has been appointed prime minister of Serbia in a double first for the EU-candidate state.

Ana Brnabić, 41, a graduate of the University of Hull in England, is the Balkan nation’s first gay PM and first female PM.

Brnabić’s appointment, which comes in the same week that Leo Varadkar was formally elected as Ireland’s first gay PM, is all the more remarkable given that virulent homophobia is still widespread in the Balkans.

The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, announced on Thursday evening that he was giving Brnabić, a non-party technocrat, the mandate to form a new government, describing her as “hard-working, [with] professional and personal qualities”, the Serbian news agency B92 reported.

Vučić, who handpicked Brnabić to succeed him as prime minister following his election as president in a landslide victory in April, is expected to remain the most powerful figure in the country. He said the Socialist foreign minister, Ivica Dačić, who has been standing in as prime minister, would “essentially lead the political part” of the government. Dačić, like Vučić, was an ally of the late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević, and is regarded as being on the pro-Russian and nationalist side of the government. Read more via the Guardian