Author Archive LGBTI Liberals of Europe

    Surrogacy should be legally allowed as a parenting option to individuals, single or coupled, that lack the reproductive capacity to become parents without the help of a surrogate.

    Women everywhere should have the right to decide when, how and under which circumstances they agree to help intended parents by donating eggs and / or carrying a baby for them.

    Appropriate legislation should be advanced to allow prospective parents, donors and surrogates everywhere to enter into legally enforceable agreements for surrogacy arrangements without the need to cross state or international borders.

    Appropriate legislation should be enacted to protect the rights of all the parties in a surrogacy journey, and seamlessly terminate any parental rights and obligations of donors and surrogates.

    Diligent measures, including appropriate regulation, should be taken to ensure all parties to a surrogacy journey make informed decisions and provide explicit consent regarding their participation. Special attention should be made to make sure candidates for egg donation and surrogacy are given access to independent medical and legal advice, and ongoing psychological and emotional support.

    The parties for a surrogacy journey should have the right to agree on a reasonable monetary compensation, possibly within regulatory guidelines, to compensate the donor and surrogate for the risk, effort and inconvenience associated with their contribution, but it should not be tied in any way to specific outcomes.

    Mediating agencies can play vital roles in helping match surrogate and donor candidates with prospective parents, as well as provide support and coordination services throughout the process. While they deserve compensation for their effort and expertise, excessive “finder’s fees” that take advantage of the scarcity of suitable candidates should be prevented through regulation. Ideally at least the service of finding surrogates and egg donors should be performed by not-for-profit matching services.

    All people must be treated equally. Therefore the age of consent must be the same for all variations of intercourse.

    Civil marriage must be open to both straight and same-sex couples.

    LGBTI individuals and same-sex couples must have equal access to adoption.            

Family laws should reflect the free choices that individuals make in organising their relationships.

    Same-sex couple’s legal parenthood of their children must be automatically obtained at their birth by both parents.

    Currently 14 EU Member States (EUMS) provide marriage for same-sex couples, and in another 9 EUMS same-sex couples can enter a registered partnership. At present 6 EUMS provide no legal recognition for same-sex couples. Due to these great differences between EUMS regarding the legal recognition for same-sex couples, LGBTI people and their families encounter, when residing in other EUMS, difficulties on grounds of sexual orientation that different-sex couples do not experience. They may encounter difficulties in such areas as recognition of their relationship, divorce and separation, immigration, children’s rights, parental responsibility, employment benefits and pension, property regimes, inheritance, recognition and enforcement of rights/obligations already acquired in host/other Member States, and possible other areas.

The Court of Justice of the European Union delivered a judgment on 5 June 2018, saying that the definition of ‘spouse’ in EU law on freedom of movement includes same-sex couples. So, EU Member States are under an obligation to grant the spouse (including from a country outside the EU) of an EU citizen a residence permit in the same way they would grant permits to different-sex spouses.

Freedom of movement one of the four fundamental freedoms guaranteed in the EU and all same-sex couples and families must be able to move freely within the EU seeing their marriages recognised and without losing their rights, duties and protections when they do so.