La Strada Documentation Center

Paper: Exploring the Introduction of Exploitation of Surrogacy in the Amended EU Anti-Trafficking Directive

Document number
3624
Date
16/10/2025
Title
Paper: Exploring the Introduction of Exploitation of Surrogacy in the Amended EU Anti-Trafficking Directive
Author/publisher
La Strada International
Availability
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Keywords
Exploitation of Surrogacy; Human Trafficking; Revised EU Anti-Trafficking Directive; Legislative Process
Summary

The objective of this paper is to examine the arguments and dynamics of the revision process, that led to the inclusion of (the exploitation of) surrogacy as a form of exploitation in the amended definition of the recast EU Anti-Trafficking Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1712).

So far, the Platform has not found any evidence for the claim made that exploitive surrogacy is indeed ‘an emerging form of human trafficking’ which would support the need for such legislative change and embedding this form explicitly in EU law. With this additional paper, we aim to understand “how”, “why”, and “when” surrogacy was incorporated in the Directive, as well as which organizations and actors pushed surrogacy into the discussions.