Today, July 15th 2026, is the deadline for Member States to transpose the first EU instrument recognising the exploitation of surrogacy as human trafficking. ICASM publishes its shadow report.
Since July 14th 2024, EU law has recognised the exploitation of surrogacy as a form of human trafficking. Directive (EU) 2024/1712 gave Member States two years to write that recognition into national criminal law, with penalties, detection protocols and dedicated resources. That deadline expires today.
Eight Member States are compliant or on a solid compliance trajectory. Twelve are at partial risk. Seven are at critical risk. Nineteen of twenty-seven are not ready.
The threshold is where transposition is being lost
Article 2(2a) of the Directive defines a position of vulnerability as a situation in which a person has no real or acceptable alternative but to submit. This is the operative core of the instrument, and it is the provision most likely to be quietly discarded.
Estonia is the only Member State to have adopted an express transposition. It did so in June 2026, ahead of every other country, with clear political will. Its Penal Code now lists surrogacy against a woman’s will among trafficking offences. A threshold of will is not a threshold of vulnerability. The distinction is not technical. A law keyed to the woman’s will protects the woman who refused and abandons the woman who had no real choice, which is the woman the Directive was drafted to reach. Amendments seeking to remove the apparent exclusion of surrogacy from the offence of knowingly using the services of a trafficking victim were rejected in committee.
When the most willing transposer in the Union produces this result, the failure is structural. It is the case for binding Commission guidance, not a model to be copied.
Formal prohibition is not transposition
On July 3rd 2026, twelve days before the deadline, the French Cour de cassation sitting in Assemblée plénière held that the prohibition of surrogacy, though part of French international public policy, does not on its own permit refusal of exequatur of a foreign judgment establishing filiation. The Procureur général had argued that granting exequatur weakens the prohibition in practice. He was not followed.
France illustrates the report’s central finding. A prohibition without an anti-trafficking qualification is circumvented through civil proceedings, while recruitment, intermediation and the exploitation of the surrogate mother herself remain entirely outside the reach of filiation litigation. Only the qualification required by the Directive reaches them. The argument that existing national law already covers the question is now doubly disqualified.
Meanwhile, one Member State is moving in the opposite direction. Since January 1st 2025, Danish law recognises parenthood arising from foreign surrogacy agreements. In early 2026, a citizens’ proposal to open Danish clinics to surrogate mothers obtained all-party support at first reading. No anti-trafficking transposition measure has been identified.
A living document
This report is updated as Member States legislate, as courts rule, and as texts are verified against primary sources. Corrections and national contributions from member organisations and researchers are welcome at .
[Download the document: ICASM – Shadow Report – 2024 1712 – 15 July 2026]