Romania virtually outlaws foreign adoptions

Romanian MPs today approved a law virtually banning the adoption of orphans by foreigners.

The new law says Romanian children can be adopted by foreigners only if they are their grandparents and only if a search for Romanian adoptive families has failed.

Parents who request or take money or other goods in exchange for giving up a child face up to seven years in prison under the new law.

The US embassy in Bucharest has criticised the law, saying it is too harsh and that Romania won’t be able to absorb its abandoned and orphaned children without international adoptions.

International adoptions in Romania boomed after television pictures of children living in squalor in orphanages were broadcast worldwide following the 1989 overthrow of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who banned birth control and abortion.

About 30,000 children have been adopted since 1989. The country’s state institutions currently house about 40,000 children, some of them abandoned, others orphans.

President Ion Iliescu is expected to sign the new law, which will then take effect on January 1.