Adoption "with guarantees" or "free" adoption

The guarantees that at a legislative level are appearing here and there in this process of adjusting to the The Hague Agreement which started to be applied in our country just two years ago are however being weakened a clash caused by some logo holes and contradictions, also legislative, endangers the principle itself of inspiring and guaranteeing; according to this principle, that the adoption procedure has to be made from central body to central body (directly or through the corresponding Accredited Organization by the public authority) without the intervention of non-authorized mediators. This is a direct allusion to what has been recently legislated by the Reglamento de Protección de Menores y de la Adopción (Regulations for the Protection of Minors and of Adoption, approved by the Generalitat de Catalunya on January 7 and partially modified in May 27, 1997. In my opinion, it implies nothing more than a dubious legal introduction of the so-called "free adoption" in its most controversial aspect, the one that affects the control of it and the real support to the families that choose this method.

(...) Indeed, exceptional situations should be foreseen by the law as far as possible. Nevertheless, it is a pity that since the The Hague Agreement, not enough special emphasis has been put on exceptionality, dealing with necessary severity, those cases in which what has been previously legislated is not fulfilled; that is to say, the intervention of the competent public authorities in the adoption process. Just simply taking into consideration this possibility which, what is more, contradicts what has been previously legislated by the very same Agreement, there might be a risk of opening a second method which some not extremely scrupulous citizens might take advantage of. These citizens may rely also on obtaining a posteriori -avoiding all the controls foreseen by the Administration- the patria potestas of the child that is already living with them. The legislations and the legislative practice derived from this article and which is being introduced by some governments constitute an additional risk. Not in vain, the European Parliament has already published a Resolution (A4-0392/96) concerning the adoption of minor's in which it is established that "the contractual character of adoption established by some national ordinances that do not foresee a jurisdictional control other than in the phase of homologation, may create some ethical and judicial problems that go beyond the relationship between the biological parents and the adopting parents".