“It was a taboo subject until a friend told me she was donating,” says Ana. The young woman explains that she had been thinking about donating eggs for some time, but the experience of someone close to her and the data she found ended up convincing her. Just a few weeks ago, Ana made her first donation at a famous assisted reproduction  clinic. Spain and Czechia were the countries with the highest number of egg donations by women like her, according to 2017 data  from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Ana says she feels “happy to be able to help people who cannot create a family.” Other donors, on the other hand, are more motivated by the financial compensation. In a recent interview with El Diario  researcher Sara Lafuente attributed the high number of donors in Spain to the economic compensation “of around a thousand euros in a country that considers a thousand euros to be too high a minimum monthly wage.”

Ten European countries allow some form of payment for egg donations. In Spain, for example, you cannot pay directly for egg donations, but it is legal to compensate  donors for the inconvenience, travel and time off work. In such countries, the authorities usually establish an upper limit to guarantee an altruistic motivation. However, in practice, there is substantial variation in compensation between countries, both in absolute terms and relative to the minimum wage . In absolute terms, compensation ranges from €250  in Finland to €1,200  in Greece. As a multiple of the minimum wage, Bulgaria  takes the cake: compensation there is equivalent to 11 weeks of the minimum wage, the highest by far in Europe and the United Kingdom.

In other European countries, such as Belgium, a maximum amount is not established, and clin