Romania: The Patchwork of Statutory Provisions Concerning Assisted Reproduction

Romania has never had a comprehensive statute on medically assisted reproduction (MAR). Despite this deficiency, assisted reproduction technologies (ART) have taken hold within a statutory framework comprising general Civil Code provisions, cell and tissue transplant legislation, and several general statutes on patients’ rights or public health programmes. Although the transplant and patient’s rights legislation can answer some of the technical questions regarding ART, the lack of an ART-specific statute implies that several legal questions either remain unanswered or are answered solely by legal doctrine based on general principles or norms employed in other areas of law. By employing a black-letter law approach, this study attempts to draw a clearer picture of applicable Romanian law to ART situations and organise disparate relevant provisions in a semi-coherent framework and identify those insurmountable deficiencies that absolutely require a legislative intervention. The legal doctrine and relevant statutes referred here were the existing legal provisions as in December 2024.