France to discuss assisted dying bill before summer
A law on assisted dying and end-of-life measures will be discussed before summer, newly appointed French health minister Catherine Vautrin told MPs on Wednesday (14 February).
The long-awaited law on the end of life in France will be discussed by “the end of spring and probably in the summer”, Vautrin said during the government question session at the National Assembly on Wednesday.
“Consultations are still taking place. Both with professionals and representatives of different schools of thought. We are also working with elected representatives and Parliament,” she added.
The subject of the end of life is a long-standing debate in France, as French President Emmanuel Macron promised that the government would legislate on a new project of law before the end of summer 2023. Currently, all actively assisted end-of-life measures are banned in Frace.
In September 2022, Macron established a citizens’ convention, made up of 184 people drawn at random, to debate the issue. According to the conclusions of the final report, 97% of citizens felt that the current “support framework” should “evolve” in France.
The first reason is “inequality of access to support at the end of life”, and the second is “the lack of satisfactory responses within the current framework for certain end-of-life situations”.
More than a year and a half later, there has been little progress on the issue.
At the end of January, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said that a bill introducing active assistance in dying would be examined before the summer. Attal also added that palliative care will be “considerably strengthened”, but without specifying a deadline.
“Today, our compatriots are clearly calling on us to review our law. It’s a request from families, from patients, it’s a serious request to which we must respond. We will respond,” he said.
On 8 February Macron himself admitted that the subject was “intimidating”, as he received representatives of religious denominations, as well as doctors and philosophers, to discuss the future law at the Elysée Palace.
But for patients’ associations, it is time for action: 90% of French people are in favour of recourse to euthanasia, according to an IFOP poll, the French opinion and marketing research institute, published in June.
“Nothing should stop the President of the Republic – not from deciding – but from submitting a fair and balanced end-of-life law to the French parliamentarians,” the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (ADMD) said in a press release.
France launches public consultation on euthanasia with Macron backing
French President Emmanuel Macron presented on Tuesday (13 September) a plan for a six-month citizen consultation on euthanasia, with stakeholders confident he is ready to move forward on the issue.
Prolonged sedation versus active euthanasia
In France, the 2016 Claeys-Leonetti law authorises “prolonged and continuous sedation”, for patients with an imminently terminal condition.
However, unlike other countries in Europe, the law does not authorise active assistance in dying, such as euthanasia or assisted suicide. Active euthanasia is authorised in Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Other countries allow alternative solutions such as assisted suicide, like Austria, Germany and Italy, or passive euthanasia, like Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Croatia.
In the first case, the patient injects the lethal dose himself, while in the second, doctors refrain from prolonging care and treatment. Switzerland allows both assisted suicide and passive euthanasia.
In 2022, 61 patients living abroad came to Belgium to benefit from euthanasia, according to figures from Belgium’s Commission fédérale de Contrôle et d’Évaluation de l’Euthanasie (CFCEE). Of these 61 patients, 53 were French.
“It is up to each country to legislate on the subject. I doubt that this is a reform that can be imposed on a European scale. In France, Emmanuel Macron is ready,” Olivier Falorni, MP (MoDem et Indépendants), who is behind a 2021 bill on the end of life, told Euractiv in a previous interview.
“Each nation has its own history and traditions, although I hope that all European citizens will eventually have access to the right to die with dignity,” he said.
The French National Consultative Ethics Committee, since September 2022, and the National Academy of Medicine, since July 2023, have both recognised that France should move forward on end-of-life measures.
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