MADRID – Mounting bureaucracy and tougher requirements for prospective parents have caused an estimated 40-percent fall over the last two years in the number of Spanish families adopting children abroad, new data shows.

The sharpest decline in adoptions has occurred in China and Russia, previously the two countries that gave more children up for adoption to Spanish families.

New requirements – including, in China’s case, that the prospective parents hold higher education degrees – have made it difficult for many families to comply with adoption rules.

In 2007, Spanish couples adopted 3,648 children abroad, 18 percent less than in 2006. Adoption agencies nonetheless say that new accords with countries such as Vietnam and Ethiopia could allow the number of children adopted by Spanish families to rise again.

[El Pais / Antia Castedo / Expatica]