Beaumont and Trimmings on Human Rights and Cross-Border Surrogacy

Paul Beaumont and Katarina Trimmings (Director and Deputy Director of the Centre for Private International Law, University of Aberdeen, respectively) have just published a highly interesting paper on “Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in the area of cross-border surrogacy: is there still a need for global regulation of surrogacy?”. The article is the second paper in the Working Paper Series of the Centre for Private International Law (University of Aberdeen) and is now available on the Centre’s website here.

The first part of their paper examines the recent decisions of Chambers of the European Court of Human Rights in cases of Mennesson v. France (on this case, see the earlier post by Marta Requejo), Labassee v. France (cf. the earlier post by F. Mailhé), and Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy. It then makes some suggestions as to how the Grand Chamber should deal with the Paradiso and Campanelli case before analysing the likely consequences of the Mennesson and Labassee judgments for national authorities in the context of surrogacy. The article then explores whether, following these decisions, there is still a need for an international Convention regulating cross-border surrogacy.

For those interested in recent developments in German case law on cross-border surrogacy, I also recommend an earlier post by Dina Reis.