Greece is amending a surrogacy provision of a recent law that allows same-sex couples to marry but excludes them from future parenthood via surrogacy, leaving no possibility for same-sex male couples to challenge the law in court, Greek Justice Minister said Tuesday.
The Ministry of Justice has prepared a multi-bill in which a specific provision in a chapter of the Civil Code (Article 1350) concerning Greek family law is amended and effectively bans same-sex male couples and single men from having a baby through a surrogate mother, who now will no longer be able to challenge the legislation in court.
The amendment comes after several couples had referred their cases to Greek courts, which had issued conflicting decisions. Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis said that the law amendment follows these decisions so that it becomes clear that “men do not have the right to surrogacy.”
“We are providing a clear explanation of what consists an inability to conceive and what consists an inability to conceive due to someone’s sex,” Floridis said. “The district court said yes and the Court of Appeals said no. So we stepped in to clarify things.”
According to the ministry’s new bill, “with regard to medically assisted reproduction by transferring eggs to another woman’s body, significant interventions are underway,” with the amended provision clearly stating that “the inability to conceive due to sex does not constitute a medical inability to conceive.”
Parenthood through surrogate mothers in Greece remains restricted to women -single or married- who are unable to have children due to medical reasons.
According to Floridis, this interpretative regulation has a “profoundly humanitarian character” as “Greece, under the previous interpretation of the law, risked becoming a country of surrogate mothers‘ trafficking.”
Last year, when the law allowing same-sex marriage in Greece was passed, several legal experts had warned that the measure excluding same-sex male couples from surrogacy was “discriminatory” and that it would be challenged in court. With the new, amended legislation that, according to the Greek Ministry of Justice leaves no window of misinterpreting the law, same-sex male couples could raise the issue before the European Court of Human Rights.
Surrogacy is the process in which a woman carries and delivers a child for a couple or an individual, often supported by a legal agreement. In Greece, commercial surrogacy is unlawful.
Greece approved a bill on same-sex marriage in February 2024 in a landmark reform promoted by the conservative government over the opposition of the country’s powerful Orthodox Church.
“The vote has passed: as of tonight, Greece is proud to become the 16th EU country to legislate marriage equality,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the time.
The bill, “Equality in civil marriage, amendment of the Civil Code and Other Provisions” implements the constitutional principle of freedom and the constitutional principle of equality, Parliament’s Scientific Service said in its report on the bill.
Like in much of the EU, surrogacy remains a thorny issue and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who tabled the legislation as “a matter of equality,” clarified early on that this was not something he was willing to tackle.
“The idea of women who are turned into child-producing machines on demand … that is not going to happen.”
