BRUSSELS — For once it was love — and not brutal political infighting — that filled the chamber of the European Parliament, when a man got down on one knee to propose to his girlfriend on Thursday.
Holding a ring in one hand and a microphone in the other, 26-year-old Kuldar Lepp popped the question to his girlfriend, Marta Schönberg, 18, surprising her in front of a room full of European People’s Party activists in town for a four-day youth event held by the parliamentary group.
“What a way to start our day, how amazing is that!” exclaimed the journalist Jack Parrock, who was moderating an event.
The Parliament’s spokesperson Jaume Duch Guillot said, to his knowledge, this was the first time in history that a couple had got engaged in the Parliament’s hemicycle-shaped chamber.
“It feels good,” Lepp told POLITICO. “It was part of the reason I thought about doing it there, because I couldn’t recall something like this happening before and I thought it would be a great grand gesture, to show love.”
Lepp (whose name literally includes the acronym for his center-right political family) is a member of an Estonian party that’s a member of the EPP family called Isamaa, as is his bride-to-be.
Isamaa has one MEP, Riho Terras, who congratulated the couple online. The pair have been together for two years, met through mutual acquaintances, and plan to get married within a year, probably in Estonia for financial reasons.
EPP chief Manfred Weber congratulated the newly-engaged pair in the room, and went for a pun by saying they had made their own “EU-nion.”
Asked if he wants to go into politics or even become an MEP himself one day, Lepp replied: “If an opportunity presents itself of course I’m going to take it like it happened right now.”
