21/09/2016 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Committee on Social Affairs of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today recommended that the Committee of Ministers of the organisation consider the desirability and feasibility of “drawing up European guidelines to safeguard children’s rights in relation to surrogacy arrangements”.
The adopted draft recommendation, based on a report prepared by Petra de Sutter (Belgium, SOC), also says that the Committee of Ministers should collaborate with the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) on private international law issues surrounding the status of children, including problems arising in relation to legal parentage resulting from international surrogacy agreements, with a view to ensuring that the views of the Council of Europe (including those of PACE and the European Court of Human Rights) are “heard and taken into account in any multilateral instrument that may result from the work of the HCCH”.
The Assembly will discuss the draft recommendation at its next plenary session (Strasbourg, 10-14 October 2016).