Il primo parere consultivo della CEDU su richiesta di un giudice nazionale e l’ordinamento giuridico italiano

The essay examines the first advisory opinion rendered by the European Court of Human Rights under Protocol No. 16 to the ECHR upon request of the French Cour de Cassation (just a few months after Protocol No. 16 entered into force). The opinion concerns the issue of the recognition of a legal parent-child relationship established abroad, with regard to the intended-non biological mother of two twin sisters who were born in the United States as a result of a gestational surrogacy arrangement. The agreement had been entered into by a French, heterosexual, married couple. Only the intended father was genetically linked to the minors. The paper firstly addresses the nature of the advisory opinion by briefly describing the major characteristics of the new procedural mechanism, under the specific perspective of the future (and still uncertain) Italian ratification of the instrument. It then examines the merits of the case. It finally attempts to evaluate the implications of the principles of law affirmed by the Court in the Italian legal order. In that regard, the essay assesses the consistency between the opinion and a recent judgment of the Italian Court of Cassation refusing recognition, on public policy grounds, of a Canadian judgment, which conferred legal parentage to the intended-non biological father of two minors born in Ontario through gestational surrogacy in the context of a male same-sex married couple (judgment No. 12193 of 8 May 2019).