ESHRE position paper on the revision of the European Union legislation on Blood Tissues and Cells

June 2021

In 2020, the Commission adopted its Work Programme for 2021 which included a revision of the current Blood, Tissues and Cells (BTC) legislation of the European Union (EU).

ESHRE is actively involved to ensure that the specificities of medically assisted reproduction are considered and the voice of MAR professionals is heard.

To this end, we prepared a position paper that highlights ESHRE’s views on some of the identified shortcomings, in the current legislation and put forward recommendations for consideration in the review process.
We have included several recommendations that, if adopted, will increase clarity, enhance safety and stimulate innovations. One of the recommendations is to discard the term “partner donation”, and adopt the term “within-couple use” for reproduction in couples with an intimate physical relationship, where one person supplies their own oocytes and the other supplies their own sperm.

More information on the identified shortcomings and recommendations from ESHRE are described in the “ESHRE position paper on the revision of the European Union legislation on Blood Tissues and Cell”

This position paper is a positive step forward, and we will continue our efforts to represent the ‘voice’ of human reproduction and embryology professionals towards the EU institutions, and to ultimately reach an improved EU Blood, Tissues and Cells (BTC) legislation.