Against surrogacy and imposing recognition of homoadoption - Ordo Iuris at European Parliament conference

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· A conference was held today at the European Parliament in Brussels. "Let's stop child trafficking."

· The event was organized by MEP Alessandra Basso, in cooperation with the Italian organization Pro Vita&Famiglia.

· The discussion was devoted to the European Commission's draft regulation on the mutual recognition of parenthood, which introduces the obligation of EU countries to recognize parentage judgments issued in another country, which also applies to same-sex couples.

· These regulations may also lead to the acceptance of surrogacy.

· At the invitation of the organizers, the discussion was attended by representatives of the Ordo Iuris Institute, who in their speech drew attention to the threats to the sovereignty of member states.

In a draft EU regulation published in December 2022, the European Commission asserts that the document is intended to level out the problems associated with moving to other EU countries in situations where parental rights granted in one country could be challenged in another. The regulation would apply to adoptive parents, meaning that it will also cover situations of same-sex couples, to whom some countries grant the right to adopt and others do not.

The regulations included in the draft will also influence the normalization of surrogacy - the purchase from a "surrogate mother" of a child to whom the buyers then obtain parental rights. Although surrogacy is currently unacceptable in EU countries, once the regulation under discussion is adopted, changes to the national laws of a member state will suffice to open the way to wider acceptance of this procedure.

Representatives of the Ordo Iuris Institute pointed out that the draft may aim directly at introducing changes in substantive family law, which remains outside the competence of member states. Moreover, the public policy clause, which could protect Poland's constitutional order, is subject to a number of restrictions that could make its application impossible in practice. In addition, the regulation's provisions on the jurisdiction of the courts of member states to determine parentage raise concerns about whether the assumed uniformity of decisions by the courts of different member states in the same cases can be achieved, which undermines the principle of EU subsidiarity.