출생의 근원을 알 권리 - 유럽인권재판소 판례의 이익형량 구조 분석과 시사점 -

This article analyzes the right to know one’s originsas an identity-related interest protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Focusing on anonymous birth and third-party gamete donation, it shows that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has not treated origin-information access as an absolute right to disclosure. Instead, the Court evaluates whether domestic law strikes a fair balance between the applicant’s identity interest and competing interests such as the biological mother’s privacy and safety, donor anonymity, third-party rights, and public interests in health and the stability of relevant systems. Through close case analysis, the article traces the Court’s core structural criterion: not “disclosure versus non-disclosure” as an outcome, but whether the legal framework avoids reducing the applicant’s access to zeroby providing workable procedural arrangements. In Odièvre v. France, the Court recognized origin-information access as a potentially “vital interest” within private life, while upholding France’s intermediary model. In Godelli v. Italy, the Court found a violation where the system offered no meaningful access even to non-identifying information and no mechanism to revisit the mother’s choice. In Cherrier v. France, the Court reaffirmed that an intermediary procedure that operates in practice may satisfy Article 8 even if anonymity is maintained. For donor conception, Gauvin-Fournis and Silliau v. France illustrates the Court’s reliance on the absence of a clear European consensus and on legislative deliberation and transitional design in assessing proportionality.