the ECHR rejects the request for access to origins - Time News

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected Thursday, September 7 the request of two people born from PMA who asked France for access to their origins and in particular to medical data on their parent.

In its judgment, the Court considers that the “refusal to disclose data relating to gamete donors to applicants born from an MAP does not breach Article 8 of the Convention”on the right to respect for private and family life.

The case opposed, since 2018, Audrey Gauvin-Fournis and Clément Silliau, born in the 1980s with a third-party donor, to the French State for a refusal of access to information on their respective parents.

“Legislative choice”

According to the Court, “the situation denounced by the applicant and the applicant stems from the choices of the
legislator ». Indeed, the lifting of anonymity for donors only dates back to September 2022, when the bioethics law came into force, with a new mechanism for access to origins, subject however to the donors’ consent.

“In the eyes of the Court, the legislator has weighed the interests and rights involved at the end of a rich and evolving process of reflection on the need or not to lift the anonymity of the donor”affirmed the judges, recalling “that there is no clear consensus on the issue of access to origins but only a recent trend in favor of lifting the anonymity of the donor, the Court considers that the legislator acted within the framework of its margin of appreciation”.

“Therefore, the respondent State cannot be blamed for the speed with which it adopted the reform and for having been slow in agreeing to such a reform. The Court concludes that the Respondent State did not disregard its positive obligation to guarantee the applicant and the applicant effective respect for their private lives. conclude the judges.

The two applicants, born in 1980 and 1989 from medically assisted procreation (MAP) with a third-party donor, maintained for their part that “the impossibility of obtaining information on their parent had infringed their right to respect for their private and family life”. Invoking Article 14 of the Convention on Human Rights, they considered that they had suffered, “because of the way they are conceived, discrimination in their right to respect for their private life compared to other children, because of the impossibility in which they find themselves to obtain non-identifying information about the third-party donor, in particular medical information.