Surrogacy – Best interest of the child – Public policy – New York Convention on the Rights of the Child – Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); Corte di Cassazione (Sez. I), 30 September 2016, No. 19599; Procuratore Generale della Repubblica presso la Corte di Appello di Torino v. B.L.I.M. and R.V.M.

Nowadays surrogacy is a widespread practice for childless parents. Surrogacy laws vary widely from State to State. Some States require genetic parents to obtain a jurisdictional order to have their names on the original birth certificate, without the name of the surrogate mother. Other States (e.g. Ukraine) allow to put the name of the intended parents on the birth certificate. In Italy all forms of surrogacy are forbidden, whether it be traditional or gestational, commercial or altruistic. Stepping back from the decision of the Italian Corte di Cassazione n. 19599/2016, the paper aims at analyzing several aspects of private international law involved in the legal reasoning of the court, among which, probably, the one that the principle of the child’s best interest should have been read not like an exception to the ordre public clause but like a basic value of this clause.