After the opinion of Advocate General Richard de la Tour, the Court of Justice delivered its judgment in case No C-4/23, Mirin, earlier this month (4 October 2024).
The request for a preliminary ruling – lodged on 3 January 2023 by the Court of First Instance, Sector 6, Bucharest (Judecătoria Sectorului 6 Bucureşti) – sought the interpretation of Arts 20 and 21 TFEU, as well as Arts 7 and 45 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This request arose from a dispute involving a Romanian and UK national against the Romanian national authorities responsible for civil registers and management of the personal numeric code, due to their refusal to recognise, and enter in his birth certificate, his new first name and gender identity acquired in the United Kingdom.
The preliminary request raised several noteworthy issues, including: (i) the link with EU law of the situation in which a citizen of the Union requests that his gender identity be entered in his birth certificate; (ii) the recognition, for civil status purposes in a Member State, of changes of first name and gender obtained in another Member State; and (iii) the impliction of Brexit on the case.
In the decision, the Court of Justice adopts a solution similar to the one suggested by the Advocate General. Indeed, the Court of Justice stated that Arts 20 and 21(1) TFEU, read in the light of Arts 7 and 45 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as “precluding legislation of a Member State that does not permit recognition and entry in the birth certificate of a national of that Member State of a change of first name and gender identity lawfully acquired in another Member State, when exercising the right to free movement and residence, with the consequence that that person is obliged to initiate, before a court, new proceedings for a change of gender identity in the first Member State, which disregard the change that was previously lawfully acquired in that other Member State.
In that regard, it is irrelevant that the request for recognition and entry of the change of first name and gender identity was made in that first Member State on a date on which the withdrawal from the European Union of the other Member State had already taken effect”.
On the topics addressed in the judgment, the readers of RDIPP may refer to:
Ruggiero Cafari Panico, 2007, No 4, 921 ff.;
Pieralberto Mengozzi, 2009 No 1, 69 ff.;
Sara Tonolo, 2009, No 4, 849 ff.;
Laura Tomasi, 2009, No 4, 891 ff.;
Arianna Vettorel, 2014, No 2, 481 ff.;
Arianna Vettorel, 2016, No 4, 1060 ff.;
Michele Grassi, 2019, No 4, 739 ff.;
Michele Grassi, 2022, No 3, 591 ff.