MENNESSON v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 21 marriages and deaths of the particulars of a birth certificate drawn up in execution of a foreign decision containing provisions which conflicted with essential principles of French law. It then observed that under French law surrogacy agreements were null and void on grounds of public policy, and that it was contrary to the “essential principle of French law” of the inalienability of civil status to give effect to such agreements as regards the legal parent-child relationship. It held that, in so far as it gave effect to a surrogacy agreement, the judgment delivered in the applicants’ case by the Supreme Court of California was contrary to the French concept of international public policy and that, as the US birth certificates of the third and fourth applicants had been drawn up in application of that judgment, the details of those certificates could not be entered in the French register of births, marriages and deaths (see paragraph 27 above). 83. The applicants’ inability to have the parent-child relationship between the first two applicants and the third and fourth applicants recognised under French law is therefore, according to the Court of Cassation, a consequence of the French legislature’s decision on ethical grounds to prohibit surrogacy. The Government pointed out in that connection that the domestic courts had duly drawn the consequences of that decision by refusing to authorise entry in the register of births, marriages and deaths of the details of foreign civil-status documents of children born as the result of a surrogacy agreement performed outside France. To do otherwise would, in their submission, have been tantamount to tacitly accepting that domestic law had been circumvented and would have jeopardised the consistent application of the provisions outlawing surrogacy. 84. The Court observes that that approach manifests itself in an objection on grounds of international public policy, which is specific to private international law. It does not seek to call this into question as such. It must, however, verify whether in applying that mechanism to the present case the domestic courts duly took account of the need to strike a fair balance between the interest of the community in ensuring that its members conform to the choice made democratically within that community and the interest of the applicants – the children’s best interests being paramount – in fully enjoying their rights to respect for their private and family life. 85. It notes in that connection that the Court of Cassation held that the inability to record the particulars of the birth certificates of the third and fourth applicants in the French register of births, marriages and deaths did not infringe their right to respect for their private and family life or their best interests as children in so far as it did not deprive them of the legal parent-child relationship recognised under Californian law and did not prevent them from living in France with the first and second applicants (see paragraph 27 above).