Quo vadis mater? Is parent in one country parent in every country? Steps forward or back in the protection of rights in the area of filiation in private international law?

Abstract: Ensuring the continuity of parent status within the territory of the Union has always raised a series of legal issues that are not easily resolved. Very often, the ones who pay the price are the rights of the subjects involved, who see the margins of protection granted widen or narrow, to the detriment of uniformity and certainty of the law. The European Commission has recently intervened by presenting a proposal for a regulation on parenthood. The proposal aims to introduce a unitary discipline in terms of applicable law, jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of acts and decisions, albeit with an effort that is not always coherent. The contribution examines the discipline of the applicable law in the proposal and the possible limits. Filiation follows a continuous path of evolution and integration in private international law through a combination of various phenomena such as the circulation of people, the use of new technologies that concern the matter of assisted procreation as well as the normative fragmentation of different sensitivities of normative systems in this matter. Procreative tourism, new systems of procreation and filiation relationships are topics that continue to create unsolved problems but also new paths to follow to protect the rights of women and children first of all and then those of family life of all types of couples.