The increase in sperm imports reveals the reality of the gametes market which is undermining the French model based on gratuity. However, beyond the tension on the supply chain, the very practice of sperm donation is raising structural questions, in view of its inherent abuses which are not merely economic.
Faced with the increased demand for Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and the shortage of donors, France is increasingly resorting to gametes sourced from foreign sperm banks, in some cases even challenging the limits of the legal controls. A recent investigation by France Inter revealed this worrying evolution.
Sperm donation: Steeply rising demand since the 2021 bioethics law
Since the 2021 bioethics law, which extended access to ART to "any couple consisting of a man and a woman or two women, or any unmarried woman", the demand has increased steeply.
According to the latest Biomedicine Agency figures, more than 12,000 ART requests with sperm donation have been recorded for couples of women and single women — i.e. a rate some six times greater than that recorded prior to the 2021 law. The waiting list contains an increasing proportion of single women:
- 47 % single women (45% in 2024, 44% in 2023),
- 38.8 % women in couples with another woman (38% in 2024, 38% in 2023)
- 14.2 % women in couples with a man (17% in 2024, 18% in 2023).
Insufficient structural supply
Faced with this explosion in demand, the available donors cannot keep up. In 2025, 1,015 candidates for sperm donation were recorded, a slight drop from 1,045 in 2024
The French model is based on the following principles:
- A top limit of 10 children per donor
- Gratuity of donations
- Since 1st September 2022, donors are obliged to accept that their identity as well as their non-identifying data can be revealed to the child born from their donation, if the child so requests on reaching adulthood.
Increasing recourse to foreign sperm banks
In such context, the importation of gametes appears as the most frequently used solution.
The data reveal a spectacular progression:
- 3 imports recorded between 2021 and 2023
- 17 in 2024
- 98 in 2025
- 76 already by mid-April 2026
Such imports are subject to authorisation by the Biomedicine Agency and must always correspond to a parental project, at the exclusion of any commercial objective.
When questioned by France Inter, the Agency stated that "there is no legal motive […] for rejecting an importation request" providing that the procedures comply with the European and French guidelines. The Agency even considers the practice as an "alternative" in view of the waiting times, rather than resorting to an ART procedure conducted entirely abroad.
A market logic is asserting itself
Behind such imports a true market chain is forming. Private sperm banks, in particular in Denmark and Portugal, such as Cryos and European Sperm Bank, are soliciting French centres by offering to deal with all the administrative procedures.
This evolution is causing concern. Catherine Guillemain, Professor of the biology of reproduction and President of the French Federation of the centres for the study and preservation of human ova and sperm (Cecos), has warned:
"Multiplying the number of importations of gametes purchased abroad, questions the very principle of the gratuity of the donation, which is a founding principle in France."
The National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) identified in 2017 the risk of marketing associated with the rarity of gametes.
Accepted commercial practices
In certain nations, donors are paid, which deeply modifies the economics of ART.
For example, Cryos states on its web-site: "Help others. Earn up to 800 euros per month", whilst European Sperm Bank provides sperm straws for more than 1100 euros from an identifiable donor.
Commercial options are also provided in order to limit the number of "families" using the gametes of a given donor:
- 11,000 € for 15 families
- 25,000 € for 5 families
- 39,000 € for exclusivity
Abuses have already been documented
Several recent cases have revealed the risks associated with such marketing.
In Belgium, children have developed cancers following the use of gametes from a donor carrying an undetected genetic mutation.
In Holland some clinics have used the same donor well beyond the legal limits, resulting in situations where a single man is the biological father of several tens of children.
Such abuses are not merely linked to a lack of supervision. They reveal the intrinsic difficulty in controlling a practice which establishes a "right to a child".
What prospects for the French model?
France is attempting today to preserve a model based on gratuity and regulation. But the practice of sperm donation in itself consists in intentionally dissociating procreation from filiation, by programming the absence of a father in the life of the child — an absence which the possibility of access to the identity of the donor on reaching adulthood can only partially compensate.
Consequently, the difficulties observed (anonymity, multiplication of births, imperfect traceability, commercial temptation) appear less as accidental abuses than as the consequences of a practice which deliberately separates conception and parental responsibility.
Faced with the increase in demand, international pressure and the global market for gametes, how can one genuinely hope to contain the abuses of a system in which certain logics are already included in its very principle? With difficulty according to a forum signed by more than 100 gynaecologists in Le Monde on 26th April 2026: In the middle of the bioethics convention, they are calling for "modifying" the French model by allowing private centres to collect and manage gamete donations and to pay the donors of gametes.