La reconnaissance légale du couple de même sexe en Europe

at the time being, same-sex couples have been legalized in twenty one european countries. the legalization raised new questions. the article treats three of them: how can we understand the timeline of legalization throughout europe? how can we understand the diversity of the newly created legal statutes? how can we explain diversity in frequen-cies of use? results of a comparative socio-demographic analysis show that the retreat of traditional marriage is the key factor for legalization and for the frequency of its use. it faci-litates legalization, but reduces its use. moreover, the different types of legal statutes bring out the traditional european opposition between differentialism and universalism.