Emmanuel Macron wants to modify the current legislation. The President of the Republic announced, this Monday, April 3, that he wanted a new law on the end of life “by the end of the summer”. “In connection with parliamentarians”, with “all the stakeholders and on the basis of the conclusions” issued on Sunday by the Citizens’ Convention on the end of life, the Head of State intends to build what he called a “model French at the end of life”, via this new law.
Among the limits set by Emmanuel Macron are the need to “guarantee the expression of the free and enlightened will”, the “reiteration of the choice”, “the incurability of refractory, psychic and physical suffering, even the commitment of the vital prognosis “.
“You rightly insist that active assistance in dying should never be carried out for a social reason, to respond to the isolation which sometimes can make a patient feel guilty who knows he is condemned to term”, added Emmanuel Macron, who also closed the door to any assistance in dying for minors. “These few red lines seem to me to usefully frame the hypothesis of a French model of the end of life and constitute our starting point”, he decided.
A “work of co-construction”
Now instructs the government, deputies and senators to carry out in a “transpartisan” way a “work of co-construction, on the basis of this solid reference which is that of the Citizens’ Convention and in connection with all the stakeholders”, added Emmanuel Macron, calling for “a bill by the end of summer 2023”.
Emmanuel Macron also pleaded for a “ten-year national plan for the management of pain and for palliative care”. This plan will be accompanied by “necessary investments”, added the President of the Republic, considering that “the State has an obligation of result” to ensure “effective and universal access to support care for the end of life”.
Evoking “the most unthinkable of things in life, the one that constitutes the end of it, that is to say our death”, Emmanuel Macron recalled having himself “a personal opinion which can evolve”, but also as a as Head of State “a responsibility of harmony and a desire for appeasement.
“A democratic decantation”
The Head of State received in the morning the 184 members of the Convention, citizens drawn by lot who participated for three months in intense debates on the subject. He paid them a strong tribute, evoking a “prior work like a democratic decantation” which corresponds to “a French model of ethics of discussion”. He also announced other Citizens’ Conventions to come on “other issues relating to the life of the nation”, without giving further details. In a report validated on Sunday, they answered three-quarters “yes” to “active dying” assistance, specifically assisted suicide or euthanasia, while matching their positions with significant restrictions.
Current legislation, set by the Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016, allows caregivers to irreversibly sedate patients near death, whose suffering is intolerable. But it does not go so far as to authorize assisted suicide (the patient administers the lethal product himself) or euthanasia (a caregiver injects it).