EUROPE FOR FAMILY
EFF
EFF aims, in a non-profit framework, to promote and defend the family as the basis of human society, and consequently, to deal, among other things, with questions concerning family policy, marriage, conception, parenthood, adoption, generational issues, childhood, education, end of life, the definition of the human being in relation to his environment, demography, the economy and fundamental freedoms.
ID: 742489515854-03
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Eva Schultz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu), Triinu Volmer (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu)
3 Apr 2025 · Meeting on surrogacy and the protection of the rights of women and children
Meeting with Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)
9 Mar 2023 · Cross-border recognition of Parenthood
Meeting with Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)
9 Mar 2023 · Proposal for a Council regulation on recognition of decisions and acceptance of authentic instruments in matters of parenthood and on the creation of a European Certificate of Parenthood
Response to Recognition of parenthood
1 Feb 2023
The Proposal of Regulation published on December 2022 uses the concept of Parenthood in the purpose of reengineering family and filiation. It will encourage surrogacy in the European Union and changes the substance of national legislation on family matters. Parenthood does not equate with filiation The proposal at hand uses parenthood throughout the text (see Art. 3 e.g.). In fact, the word parenthood cannot be used because it is not a legal concept. Parenthood is a de facto situation, which designates the exercise by a person of a role of education and does not carry any legal effect per se. Yet the Commission inaccurately insists on making it equivalent to the word filiation to impose all types of unions and reproduction means to all Member states. Moreover, the international conventions on adoption as well as the Surrogacy/Parentage project of The Hague Conference on Private international Law (HCCH) use the term parentage, as an equivalent to filiation in 501 occurrences in its November 2022 Final Report The feasibility of one or more private international law instruments on legal parentage. Jurisprudential court decisions diverge about the establishment of a parent-child relationship in the case of surrogacy The Mennesson V. France European Court of Human Rights decision of 2014 is the only judgement referred to in the proposal (see Regulation Proposal, n°18). The European Commission deliberately omits two contradicting court decisions: the ECHR ruled against the recognition of surrogacy of a child purchased in the United States in the Valdís Fjölnisdóttir v. Iceland case in 2021; similarly, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR ruled that Italy was right not to recognize parentage for a child purchased by surrogacy contract in Russia, in the Paradiso Campanella v. Italy judgment of 2017. The European Commission falsely argues that two million children are denied parental links There are an estimated two million children who can see their legal relationship with their parents denied in another Member State. This situation is not acceptable. (Commissioner Reynders, JURI hearing January 9, 2023) The administrative and financial burden caused by the recognition of a cross-border parental relationship as evoked in the European Commission Public Consultation and risk assessment of April 14th 2021 was neither quantifiable nor estimated. No example other than that of a real-life same-sex couple was provided. Two additional fictious situations were subjected to assessment which demonstrates that the number of persons and children affected by such a burden is dismal and only serves categorical interests in LGBTIQ+ families. The situation we are facing is precisely that we do not have harmonised rules that cover the cross-border implications of such cases [] You have the fragmentation: you may get different results depending on the Member State in which you seize the court and the rules of jurisdiction that Member States will observe if their courts can rule on this. This whole fragmentation is the embodiment of the risk to have conflicting results in different Member States, with the consequences for children." (Andreas Stein, head of Unit Civil Justice, hearing of stakeholders December 14, 2021) Children born abroad and raised in LGBTIQ+ families are stateless and are not restricted in their travel. Baby Sara could have been issued travel documents, would the mother have requested it. The only administrative and financial burden caused to family relationships in cross-border situations it that of the persons who infringe their own countrys family law. Illegal situations do not equate with legal uncertainty. The legal uncertainty of cross-border situation is solely generated by illegal intricacies. This regulation would also create a difference of treatment between the cross-border and non-cross-border rainbow families. In the name of non-discrimination, the latter would undoubtedly request the same treatment.
Read full responseResponse to Prevention of harmful practices against women and girls
31 May 2022
Many EU Member States neglect a specific form of harmful practice against women and girls: reproductive exploitation.
Also known as surrogacy, reproductive exploitation is the practice whereby a couple or a single person signs a commercial contract with a woman bearing a baby she would relinquish after birth.
This type of violent practices is usually presented as a positive experience for women. Whether for money or not, surrogate mothers think they behave in an altruistic way in favour of mandating persons.
However, it is worth bearing in mind, that women’s rights seriously undermined such practice where women’s bodies are used as a commodity.
This burning issue has to be addressed urgently especially in the context of Ukrainian war, whereby women and girls are highly vulnerable and exposed to human trafficking practices such as surrogacy. Surrogacy agencies are heavily targeting these vulnerable Ukrainian women, as they are disoriented, they lack of money and they are worried about their uncertain future. This profitable “womb trafficking” business is scandalous; in fact the last EP resolution on The impact of the war against Ukraine on women reported: “Ukraine accounts for over a quarter of the world’s commercial surrogacy market and an estimated 2 000 to 2 500 babies are born through surrogacy each year in the country”.
Reproductive exploitation agencies reap the fruit of women in need or trying to help others couples “help”. In fact, not only surrogacy is a lucrative market but also it is a modern form of slavery and human being trafficking with severe impact on woman’s physical and mental health on the long term. Online surrogacy companies make tailor-made adverts to woman in age of giving birth and advise commissioning couples on how to override national law preventing such human trafficking.
Reproductive exploitation has been already condemned three times within the European legislation, including in the last plenary session on the 6th May 2022 in the Resolution on The impact of the war against Ukraine on women. The paragraph 12 of this resolution clearly states that “sexual exploitation for surrogacy and reproduction is unacceptable and a violation of human dignity and human rights”.
Previously, the European Parliament already condemned Reproductive exploitation twice in 2021 in the resolution of 21 January 2021 on the European Union strategy for Gender Equality (2019/2169 (INI), §32) and in the resolution of 10 February 2021 on the implementation of Directive 2011/36/EU on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims (2020/2029 (INI), §28. In those resolutions, reproductive exploitation is defined as “treatment of human beings” and “a violation of human dignity and human rights”.
Nevertheless, there is still much to be done. So which measures can be taken to prevent such nefarious practices from happening?
1. Include reproductive exploitation namely all forms of surrogacy, be it non-commercial or commercial, in the list of EU crimes (art. 83§1TFEU). Reproductive exploitation is criminalised to a varying degree in the Member States and falls under the areas “trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children » as listed in art. 83§1 TFEU. Only the extension of the list of EU crimes to reproductive exploitation can enable an effective and comprehensive criminal approach to this practice, in line with various legal instruments protecting women’s rights and tackling human trafficking.
2. Girls and women should be informed of their mental and physical health life time consequences as well as that of the relinquished baby. As it is the Union competence to obviate sources of danger to physical and mental health (art. 168§1 TFEU), the European Commission has to launch prevention campaigns on the high-level risks of reproductive exploitation, especially towards young and vulnerable women, women with low incomes and women from minority groups.
Read full responseMeeting with Gilles Lebreton (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)
19 May 2022 · Reconnaissance de parentalité et intelligence artificielle
Response to Recognition of parenthood
10 May 2021
At the international level, the definition of parenthood is based upon the Art. 7 of the International Convention of the Rights of the Child: the two parents of the child. All legislation produced by the EU must fall under this binding definition. All 27 EU Member States ratified the ICRC have to abide to this definition.
It should be stressed that the term "parents" can only be interpreted as referring to the father and the mother of the child, "according to the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms". Parents, referred to as his/her biological parents, who gave life to him or her, should translate as “mother” and “father” in accordance with the customary rules of interpretation of international treaties which gives prominence to the ICRC’s author. Consequently, the EU legislation can only use the term "parent" to designate a father or a mother.
EU institutions, specifically the EU Court of Justice and the European Commission cannot impose the transcription of children born of surrogacy into the national civil registry.
Moreover, the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights of June 26, 2014 and of July 21, 2016 ask the French state to transcribe to the civil registry the biological filiation recorded in the birth certificates of children born of surrogacy abroad. Consequently, the father’s biological filiation must be established. In these judgments, the ECHR considers that prohibiting the establishment of the filiation bond between a father and his biological offspring, born of a surrogacy abroad, is inconsistent with the children's right to respect of their private life, as per Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Those rulings invoke the need to recognize this same necessity for a biological bond with the parents in the best interest of the child: "It cannot be said to be in the interest of the child to deprive him or her of a legal relationship of this nature where the biological reality of that relationship has been established and the child and parent concerned demand full recognition thereof."
The EU must protect the non-transcription of birth certificates of children born to surrogacy in another country, within or without the European Union.
Two nefarious consequences of mutual recognition of marriage are the creation of a “baby market” within the EU and the discrimination against women.
The recognition of parenthood would de facto include surrogacy, by which intending parents acquire a child born through a surrogate mother, paid or not for her pregnancy. This practice is known as reproductive exploitation and was condemned twice by the European Parliament. Currently thirteen Member states prohibit it. The EU cannot afford to step on Member State’s constitutions, civil and family laws.
One of the most frequent reason invoked for a new legislation on cross-border families is that children born from parents of two different Member States would then become stateless, should parenthood not be established in the same way in both countries. It is a fallacious argument, as the child is always granted a country of birth and a country of residence. According to the different country rules, a child always holds a civil registration.
Similarly to full adoptions whereby adopting parents are granted the same status as biological parents of the adopted child, cross-border families cannot claim that the child is stateless. A child born in the EU could temporary be stateless if the intended parents failed to declare who is the biological genitor of the child. Without the proof of a biological link between the intended parents and the child, one cannot establish that this child is effectively related to the applicants. The EU cannot be instrumentalized to the benefit of intending “parents” and the detriment of children and women’s rights. To demonstrate the EU’s intention to effectively condemn reproductive exploitation, it has to use all legal means to block and legal circumvention and manipulation.
Read full responseMeeting with Maria Luisa Cabral (Cabinet of President Ursula von der Leyen)
27 Jan 2021 · Mutual Recognition of Parenthood
Response to Delivering for children: an EU strategy on the rights of the child
4 Aug 2020
As the EU Strategy on the rights of the Child aims to strengthen promotion and protection of the rights of the child in the EU, effective measures should be taken to ensure the respect of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention is not respected in regard to the filiation between a child and its mother in the case of a surrogacy.
The Convention on the rights of the child states that:
Art.7.1. “The child shall [have] as far as possible the right to know and be cared by his or her parents.”
Art.35. “State Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form.”
Surrogacy is a method of assisted procreation in which the gestation will be outsourced to another woman, called surrogate mother. Intended parents use surrogacy to start or grow their families when they can't do so on their own. Surrogacy may be commercial or not, but the surrogate mother is always paid for her material needs during the pregnancy. Surrogate mothers are mostly very poor women in underdeveloped countries.
Everyone has the right to create a family, but the best interests of the child must be the first consideration. In a surrogacy process, the child will be separated at birth from the woman who bore him or her during nine months. That procedure is dubbed as a “maternity traffic”.
Many legal texts stress that surrogacy is an act contrary to the children’s rights:
- In 2011, the European Parliament voted a resolution on priorities and outline of a new EU policy framework to fight violence against women (2010/2209(INI)) which asked Member States to acknowledge the serious problem of surrogacy which constitutes an exploitation of the female body and her reproductive organs.
- In 2015, the European Parliament voted the Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World 2014 and the European Union’s policy on the matter, which condemns the practice of surrogacy, “which undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity; considers that the practice of gestational surrogacy which involves reproductive exploitation and use of the human body for financial or other gain, in particular in the case of vulnerable women in developing countries, shall be prohibited and treated as a matter of urgency in human rights instruments” (115).
- In 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children warned against the abuse of all forms of surrogacy in her official report (A/73/174) and her thematic report on surrogacy (A/HRC/37/60).
- Surrogacy implies the sale of a child and must be considered as illegal according to the Art.35 of the Convention on the rights of the Child. The additional protocol of this convention defines the sale of children as “any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration” (Art.2 Additional Protocol).
As surrogacy is the transfer of a child-to-be from its pregnant mother to another person, it clearly falls into this prohibited category.
- Article 4(4)(4) of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption requires that the consent for adoption is not obtained by coercion or for the purpose of improper financial gain.
One of the legal tricks used by the intended parents to obtain the full recognition of the child is to make a formal adoption of the child from the surrogate mother. But this is acted through a commercial contract, with a financial gain for the surrogate mother.
- The European Convention on the Legal Status of Children born out of Wedlock provides that maternal affiliation of every child born out of wedlock shall be based solely on the fact of the birth of the child (Art.2).
Surrogacy must be listed as violating basic rights of the child.
Read full responseMeeting with Monika Ladmanova (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)
15 Feb 2017 · Gender equality and family policies