“Invisible” in Greece the children of same-sex families

In January 2014 the Eleni Maravelia, Greek woman from Thessaloniki who lives and works in Barcelona, gave birth to her first child. A few weeks later, along with Kate McArdle, the British couple and non-biological mother of their daughter, Eleni learned that the newborn has a tumor in the liver. It was a neuroblastoma, a form of childhood cancer. The immense joy of the birth, the fact that from now on Eleni and Kate will be mothers, in just a few weeks he was overwhelmed by the sad prospects of the disease. And as Eleni and Kate tried to manage the new bleak and unexpected way in their life together, they found that current legislation in Great Britain, but much more in Greece does not allow them to be considered legal parents and legal family. This immediately meant that if their baby needed urgent transportation to receive treatment at a neuroblastoma hospital outside of Spain, there would be no legally valid documents that would allow Eleni and Kate or one of them to accompany their child. Still unable to perceive anything, the little Francesca, the name chosen by his mothers, had before him a double Golgotha: on the one hand the battle to defeat him Canceron the other hand, the complicated and time-consuming procedures to convince public services such as the Athens Special Register, probably a civil court, the Greek state, and more broadly the entire European Union that you are entitled to a regular birth certificate . You have the right to register in the Municipal Register of Thessaloniki, you have the right to have Greek citizenship and a Greek passport. And that in the future the child will have every right to enroll in a Greek school, to use public health services, etc. Also, if there is no legal family, the parents are exempt from any privileges such as allowances, tax exemptions, etc. Instead, however, Francesca became another of the roughly 10,000 children in the EU. what are meteorites between nationalities, nationalities and fundamental rights as citizens. Including the right to free movement.

THE GermanyFor example, it is a country where a same-sex couple is legally recognized as a family by marriage or cohabitation. However, if a couple in this category emigrates to Greece, they will no longer be considered a family. In the case of two parents, the children will be treated as completely orphans, since according to Greek law the concept of father exists only in relation to a woman-mother. If the parents of the same-sex family are two women, only one is recognized as biological or adoptive, but definitely as a single mother. Her children are registered as “unknown father”, while the other mother is completely non-existent in Greece.

In some other countries, such as Great Britain, the second mother has the option of post-adoption of the children she is already raising together with her husband, something that is not offered in Greece. So, in the event of divorce or death of the “main” mother, the “secondary” mother has no rights to the children, regardless of whether they belong to both her and her husband.

Greece below the base

Fortunately, the daughter of Eleni Maravelia and Kate McArdle managed to win Cancer. His body turned out to be stronger than the neuroblastoma but also from the tests of the operations to remove the tumors, the aggressive chemotherapy, the radiation and everything that he had to do in the first months of his life. The problem that persists, however, concerns Francesca’s right to move from Spain, where she was born and lives, to one of her two homelands, Great Britain or Greece. Eleni explains in “TOPIC»His peculiar problem is the following: “There are too many same-sex couples who do not intend to have children, so they do not face the problem. It is something that, even if it concerns you directly, you may never have heard of. our daughter and when we urgently needed her passport. In general, yes, same-sex families with parents of different nationalities living in a third country, such as Kate and I, are a small minority. But a minority that suffers a great injustice, an injustice not so much for parents as for children ”.

In 2017, Eleni Maravelia gave birth, again with the assisted reproduction method, to Alexandra. However, before starting the artificial insemination process, Eleni and Kate were married. So when the birth certificate of his second daughter was issued in Spain, the British authorities recognized it immediately. “When Kate and I decided to have children, we had been together for about seven years.”says Eleni as she summarizes the events that led her to become an informal representative of a group of some 15 “homeopathic” same-sex Greek families abroad. These are families that are recognized in many other countries, but in Greece they are “invisible».

In fact, Eleni Maravelia had informed him of her problem in 2016. European Union, where he was called in 2018 to provide more information to so far completely ignorant MEPs. She is also the president of NELFA, a pan-European network for the rights of LGBTQ families, consisting of 41 associations, with at least 20,000 members from 33 countries. Above all, however, NELFA coordinates actions for the 10,000 children who are not covered by current legislation. Compared to the rest of the EU, Greece ranks low in the ranking of countries when it comes to respecting the rights of LGBTQ families. With an excellent 100 achieved by Belgium and Malta in this field, our country scores below the base, with only 32.

In Greece there is no legal framework for the recognition of two parents of the same sex, but this does not mean that there are not hundreds of children growing up in a family environment of the same sex.. Children who in Greece are not protected by the State. On the contrary, their right to family life is being, in essence, violated. However, the gears may begin to shift if the European Union court in Luxembourg rules in favor of a same-sex couple, with a mother from Bulgaria and one from Gibraltar claiming the right to be recognized as a family in the former.

Eleni’s adventure

“The decision to be mothers”, Eleni Maravelia emphasizes, “It was not easy at all. We have been thinking about it for years, if it is correct, if we will get it, etc. When we were sure that we wanted to, we began to explore the data. At first we thought it would be relatively easy, because every child born in Spain, immediately, from the first moment – and especially in Catalonia – is considered to have two mothers, even for couples outside of marriage. However, as we were told, our daughter would not have Spanish, but the citizenship of her parents. to the British consulate, where we were assured that there would be no problem and that the British certificate would be issued as normal. A few days after Francesca was born, we sent her Spanish birth certificate to Great Britain to be entered in the municipal registers and given to her. issue your passport. Meanwhile, neuroblastoma developed, so we were two mothers, one British and the other Greek, in a foreign country for both of us, Spain, with a child. three and a half months old who had cancer. Fortunately, our parents were by our side. My mother, literally the day after the diagnosis, took the first plane and came to Barcelona to be with us.

In this situation came the chills of BrittanyWe received a negative birth certificate on the grounds that Kate is not the biological mother of the child and would be recognized as a mother under UK law only if the assisted reproduction had been performed in a British clinic. But we urgently needed a passport for the child. We went to the Greek consulate and they told us that it is impossible, according to Greek law, to issue a birth certificate with two mothers. The only possibility was for me to go in person, together with a lawyer, to the Athens Special Registry. To do this, I first had to have an official translation of our daughter’s Spanish birth certificate into Greek. The translator I found, by a terrible coincidence, turned out to be the daughter of an employee of the Greek consulate in Barcelona. After an informal conversation with Kate, the translator informed her mother. And when I went to the consulate to validate the document, the secretary said “why didn’t you mention that the child has cancer? “Give me some time to see what can be done.” The next day I went back to the consulate. They told me that, by order of the honorary consul, they would register our daughter as the daughter of a single mother. That was the only way. But the adjectives had to be changed and registered only with mine, while in the Spanish certificate the child was declared with two adjectives and Kate’s first. I accepted this arrangement, because I had no space, I was pressured by circumstances. I signed a responsible declaration and the consular certificate was sent to the Special Registry of Athens. After one month birth certificate. The child was registered in the Municipal Register of Thessaloniki and now we could apply for a passport. “

Greek obstacles

Like other same-sex couples in which one of the spouses is Greek, Eleni and Kate are seriously considering moving to Greece permanently. The only obstacle is the inhospitable landscape that makes up the legislation. From Eleni Maravelia’s point of view, the European Union must redress the injustice.

And it points out characteristics: “Our children are a reality. Francesca is 7 years old, speaks four languages ​​(Greek, English, Spanish, Catalan) and likes to paint dogs. Alexandra is 4 years old, has started to learn to write her name and is crazy about chocolate. Their reality is that they have two mothers who raise them the best they can. I would like to hear the Special Registry, the Church and the political parties explain to these children that their family is not accepted in Greece, that it is considered a mistake. against public order and cannot be accepted by Greek society. Let them tell this to my children and to all the children who, instead of protecting and caring for their interests, the state bodies in Greece, and not only, deprive them of their fundamental rights “.

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