Abstract

Surrogacy has appeared in the European Union (EU)’s agenda since the early 2010s following the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the advisory opinions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and the rejection of this practice by the European Parliament (EP). This is part of a broader evolution imposing surrogacy as a transnational issue setting major ethical challenges. Against this background, our research question is two-fold. First, is the EU likely to develop a full-fledged regulatory framework on surrogacy? Second, is surrogacy a bone of contention that fosters morality politics at the EU level? Morality politics is here defined as a political style characterized by two features: a dynamics of politicization leading to uncompromising value conflicts; the primacy of “first principles”, frequently with a religious dimension, over interests. Our findings suggest that surrogacy does not fully develop into an EU policy area. This is largely explained by the resistance of European institutions to engage in a morality politics-like debate. In other words, this is precisely the controversial dimension of surrogacy and the impossibility to deal with it in the usual EU policy style based on compromise and avoidance of value clashes that prevent any EU regulation.

摘要

自 2010 年代初以来，在欧盟法院 (CJEU) 的裁决、欧洲人权法院 (ECtHR) 的咨询意见和拒绝之后，代孕问题已出现在欧盟 (EU) 的议程中。这种做法由欧洲议会 (EP) 提出。这是将代孕作为设置重大伦理挑战的跨国问题的更广泛演变的一部分。在此背景下，我们的研究问题有两个方面。首先，欧盟是否有可能制定完善的代孕监管框架？其次，代孕是否是欧盟层面促进道德政治的争论焦点？道德政治在这里被定义为具有两个特征的政治风格：政治化的动力导致不妥协的价值冲突；“首要原则”的首要地位，经常带有宗教色彩，而不是利益。我们的研究结果表明，代孕并没有完全发展成为欧盟的政策领域。这在很大程度上是由于欧洲机构抵制进行类似道德政治的辩论。换句话说，这正是代孕的有争议的方面，并且不可能以基于妥协和避免阻止任何欧盟监管的价值冲突的通常欧盟政策风格来处理代孕。