Op-Ed: “A Dog Is Not a Suitcase: Iberia (C-218/24)”

Introduction

On 16 October 2025, the Court of Justice will answer a deceptively simple question referred by the Juzgado de lo Mercantil n°4 de Madrid (Spain) in Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España (C-218/24): when a companion animal is lost during international air carriage, does the 1999 Montreal Convention treat their loss like the loss of ‘baggage’? Behind that phrasing lies a legal and ethical fault line. If companion animals are assimilated to baggage, the loss of a sentient being is channelled through a property-based regime and a low, fixed compensation cap – an outcome increasingly at odds with EU primary law (Article 13 TFEU), the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), and the lived reality of multispecies European families.