6 MENNESSON v. FRANCE JUDGMENT between a child and a couple who had lawfully contracted an agreement with a surrogate mother was not contrary to international public policy, which should not be confused with domestic public policy. 26. At a hearing on 8 March 2011 the advocate-general recommended quashing the judgment. He expressed the view that a right lawfully acquired abroad or a foreign decision lawfully delivered by a foreign court could not be prevented from taking legal effect in France on grounds of international public policy where this would infringe a principle, a freedom or a right guaranteed by an international convention ratified by France. He noted in particular that in Wagner and J.M.W.L. v. Luxembourg (no. 76240/01, 28 June 2007) the Court had taken account, in its examination of the case under Article 8 of the Convention, of an “effective family life” and “de facto family ties” between a single mother and the child she had adopted in Peru, without attaching any importance to the fact that the former had gone abroad in search of a legal system which would allow her to obtain what the law of her country of origin refused her. In the advocate-general’s opinion, if the same rationale were applied in the present case, even where domestic law had been circumvented, a legal relationship lawfully created abroad could not be prevented from producing the relevant legal effects where it concerned an effective family set-up and allowed it to function and evolve in normal conditions from the standpoint of Article 8 of the Convention. He also observed that the third and fourth applicants had been living in France for ten years and “[were being] brought up there by genetic and intended parents in a de facto family unit in which [they were receiving] affection, care, education, and the material welfare necessary to their development” and that this effective and affective family unit – fully lawful in the eyes of the law of the country in which it had originated – [was] “legally clandestine”, “the children having no civil status recognised in France and no parent-child relationship regarded as valid under French law”. As to whether that state of affairs infringed their “right to a normal family life”, the advocate-general replied as follows: “... At this stage two answers are possible: either – somewhat theoretically and largely paradoxically – the refusal to register the birth particulars is inconsequential and does not substantially affect the family’s daily life, which means that registration is a mere formality and it is therefore difficult to see any major obstacle in the circumstances to recording the details of certificates with such minimal legal effect that it is inconceivable that they are capable in themselves of shaking the foundations of our fundamental principles and seriously contravening public policy (since they do not intrinsically contain any mention of the nature of the birth). Alternatively, the refusal to register the birth details permanently and substantially disrupts the family’s life, which is legally split into two in France – the French couple on one side and the foreign children on the other – and the question then arises whether our international public policy – even based upon proximity – can frustrate the right to family life within the meaning of Article 8 [of the Convention] or whether, on the contrary, public policy of that kind, whose effects have to be analysed in practical terms as do those of the foreign rights or decisions that it seeks to exclude,