On 12 January 2026, ELI Fellows formally approved its Report on Enhancing Child Protection: Private International Law on Filiation and the European Commission’s Proposal COM/2022/695 final.
This Report, developed under the leadership of Dr Ilaria Pretelli and Prof Dr Susanne Gössl, examines the above proposal and its critical role in advancing fundamental rights within the EU. While preserving the Commission’s Proposal's core vision and framework, this analysis recommends strategic refinements that strengthen alignment with the existing EU acquis, foster deeper European integration, and enhance the protection of children's fundamental rights. In addition, it expands upon the Proposal's initial emphasis on the EU Strategies for children's rights and LGBTIQ+ equality by incorporating a comprehensive women's rights perspective.
In the words of Co-Reporters:
Cross-border questions of filiation can put the well-being of the child in jeopardy. Their fundamental rights depend on the rules providing a clear and stable determination of the child-parent relationship. Uncertainty can especially be enhanced by the legal diversity and, therefore, problematic reality of gamete donation and surrogacy. Taking into account the divisions experienced by contemporary tentatives of drafting uniform private international law rules, the project proposes amendments to the EU Commission’s Parenthood Proposal. It aims to create a harmonised legal framework that puts the best interest of the child in the centre by attempting to reconcile the different legal traditions or decisions on how to determine such a filiation relationship around the best interest of the child.
The Report succeeded to reconcile the rights and protection of the three different groups by adopting three main strategies, each of which focuses on the legal needs of each group:
The first strategy consists in focusing on the universal rights of children and on the principle of non-discrimination of children based on the circumstances surrounding their birth.
The second strategy consists in designing rules that ensure respect for the principle of non-discrimination of parents based on their sexual orientation by shifting the focus from the couple claiming joint parentage to the child’s relation with each of the parents separately. This solution promotes transparency and ensures the instrument's adaptability to foreseeable developments, such as multiple parentage arrangements.
The third strategy consists in preserving private international law’s primary goal to merely coordinate legal orders in a neutral way.
Additionally, in order to enhance European integration and EU fundamental rights and freedoms, ELI rules provide for the institution of a central EU register, where each Member State could retrieve information on children who have benefitted from an ECF.
The ELI Report provides a set of recommendations, illustrations, in-depth analysis of the Commission’s Proposal and concrete drafting suggestions how to improve it.
More information about the project can be found here.
A webinar to present and discuss the Report will take place on 12 March 2026 from 12:30 CET. More here.
For press inquiries and additional information, kindly contact the ELI Secretariat (secretariat@europeanlawinstitute.eu). The project’s Co-Reporters are also available for interviews and further clarifications.
