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

Introduction

On 16 October 2025, the Court of Justice answered 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’? 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.

This is not about inventing animal rights, but a question