MENNESSON v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 13 where it was necessary to annul a civil-status document concerning a French national that had been drawn up abroad in accordance with local procedures. 61. The Court is not convinced by the applicants’ submission. The mere fact that the public prosecutor’s office itself requested registration of the judgment of the Supreme Court of California of 14 July 2000, in order to then request that the entry be annulled, cannot lead the Court to conclude that the aim pursued by the interference in question did not appear among those listed in the second paragraph of Article 8. Nor, however, is it convinced by the Government’s assertion that the aim was to “prevent disorder or crime”. The Court observes that the Government have not established that where French nationals have recourse to a surrogacy arrangement in a country in which such an agreement is legal this amounts to an offence under French law. It notes in this connection that, although an investigation was commenced in the present case for “acting as an intermediary in a surrogacy arrangement” and for “false representation infringing the civil status of children”, the investigating judge held that there was no case to answer on the ground that, as the acts had been committed on US territory, where they were not classified as a criminal offence, they did not constitute a punishable offence in France (see paragraphs 15-16 above). 62. The Court understands, however, that the reason France refuses to recognise a legal parent-child relationship between children born abroad as the result of a surrogacy agreement and the intended parents is that it seeks to deter its nationals from having recourse to methods of assisted reproduction outside the national territory that are prohibited on its own territory and aims, in accordance with its perception of the issue, to protect children and – as can be seen from the study by the Conseil d’État of 9 April 2009 ... – surrogate mothers. Accordingly, the Court accepts that the Government may consider that the interference pursued two of the legitimate aims listed in the second paragraph of Article 8 of the Convention: the “protection of health” and “the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”. (c) “Necessary in a democratic society” (i) The applicants 63. The applicants conceded that, as there was no common European approach, the States Parties in principle had a wide margin of appreciation regarding the content of legal provisions concerning surrogacy. They submitted that in the present case, however, the scope of that margin of appreciation was relative. In their submission, the question was not whether the prohibition of surrogacy agreements by a member State was compatible with the Convention. What was in issue here was a decision which, in their country of residence, deprived children born as the result of a surrogacy