Sofia, Bulgaria:
A similar-sex couple from Bulgaria and Gibraltar took their fight to receive nationality for their stateless child girl to the EU’s prime court on Tuesday.
Lawyers say their battle could possibly be a test case for thousands of similar-sex parents, whose youngsters are at threat of citizenship limbo simply because of legislative variations across the EU member states.
Fourteen-month-old Sara was born in Spain and offered a birth certificate that lists her two mothers as parents, but she could not be granted Spanish citizenship as neither lady is Spanish.
British law does not enable Sara’s Gibraltarian mother to pass on her British citizenship if the child is born in a third nation.
And the Bulgarian authorities turned down a request for citizenship, insisting that the baby’s birth certificate can’t include things like two individuals of the similar sex and ought to only list her biological mother.
Sara’s parents have been married in 2018 in Gibraltar but Bulgaria does not enable similar-sex marriage and does not recognise similar-sex marriages performed abroad.
“This puts the child at risk of remaining stateless or being deprived of one of its parents, if its biological mother is revealed,” the Bulgarian mother’s lawyer Denitsa Lyubenova told AFP immediately after Tuesday’s hearing at the European Court of Justice.
“There is no legal means in Bulgaria to defend the child’s best interests,” she added.
An EU court ruling is anticipated later this year, but what ever it decides, the legal battle to provide Sara with citizenship will be referred back to a court in Sofia.
“For now we are stuck in Spain with the baby and not allowed to leave, feeling hopeless to change anything,” Sara’s Bulgarian mother stated.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in November presented the EU’s initial LGBTIQ Equality Strategy, promising to push for recognition of the rights of similar-sex parents across the bloc.
“If you are parent in one country, you are parent in every country,” she stated.
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