Vincenzo Lorubbio

By a recent judgment, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights overturned its earlier ruling in the case Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy, concerning surrogacy. In this case the Strasbourg judges ruled that there are no grounds to configure as “family life” the relationship between the applicants and the child that they had tried to adopt. The decisions of the Italian courts to remove the child from the prospective parents, therefore, only affect their “private life”. The Court, while emphasizing the strong emotional impact that the separation determines over the spouses, it does not believe that there are the conditions for a violation of their “private life” under article 8 ECHR as the Italian authorities struck a fair balance between the interests concerned. Once again, although less explicitly, the “Best interests of the child” evaluation appears to play a decisive role. However, the vehemence of the “concurring and dissenting opinions” clearly point out the urgent need for an international legislation to regulate such a discipline. In fact the judgment in question is only a new although remarkable step and not the end point of the debate about the very controversial issue related to surrogacy.