This issue promises to transcend the splits, touching certain parliamentarians directly and giving way to the imbued debates of gravity: the end of life returns to the hemicycle of the National Assembly this Monday, May 12 through two texts.
One, consensual, is related to the strengthening of palliative care, to the creation of a “enforceable right”, while according to a report by the July 2023 Court, only half of the needs were provided. The other, subject to divisions, aims to create an aid to die whose case, as the case may be, to the assisted suicide or euthanasia.
More than 3,300 amendments
The deputies will discuss these bills for two weeks, including weekends if necessary, before a solemn vote scheduled for May 27. In the program: more than 3,300 amendments, including more than 700 in the second text of the deputy of the Ciotte Gérault group, support of Eric Zemmour in 2022.
For what departure? The first version has few doubts. As for the help to die, it was approved by 28 deputies against May 15 on the committee. An unequivocal vote that allows you to expect Alator of the text Olivier Falorni (modern group) that there is a significant majority in the hemicycle in favor of the text, even if it does not want to “prejudge (r) of anything.”
Divisions at the Base of the Government
For this, it will be necessary that part of the government base (together for the Republic, the Republicans, Modem, Horizons) vote in favor of this device together with the left that is largely favorable. However, the various members of the François Bayrou team, themselves oppose the creation of help to die, are divided into the subject.
Some showed their opposition, such as the Interior Minister of Bruno Retailleau, who again denounced this weekend an “anthropological rupture text.”
Along the same lines, seven deputies of his camp whose emergency doctor, Philippe Juvvin, had criticized in a tribune in Le Figaro, a text that does not provide enough safeguards, either on time, the traceability of the procedure, the collegiality of the decision or the verification of the free will of one that requests euthanasia.
Others have set up in the niche to defend this social development. Thus, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin had underlined his “quite deep disagreement” with the tenant of the Beauvau place on April 15.
President Emmanuel Macron said he was cautious, considering before the Masons of the Grand Lodge of France that the debate could not “reduce” against life, but had to make the question of “smaller evil.”
The head of the deputies EPR, Gabriel Attal, has committed more frankly when providing his support for the text in a gallery signed with the line of singer Renaud, committed for a long time on this subject.
The Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin, also reiterated on Sunday to Parisian that her desire to respond to a “strong expectation of the French” while making “access to help die is very supervised.”
What criteria to help die?
The question of the criteria for opening access to this new law will be particularly discussed. The minister had defended in the spring of 2024 among the required conditions, the fact that the patient suffers “for a serious and incurable condition that involves his short or medium term life prognosis.”
This notion of “medium term” had been dismissed by the deputies, considered too vague and ineffective. The text of Olivier Falorni Falorni now establishes that the patient is “that suffers from serious and incurable affection, whatever the cause, which involves the vital prognosis, in an advanced or terminal phase.” A definition considered too broad by several deputies, including Philippe Juvin and many of his colleagues.
The high health authority estimated on Tuesday in an opinion that “there was no medical consensus on the definition of the vital prognosis committed ‘in the medium term'”.
He also defined the “advanced phase”, such as “the entry into an irreversible process marked by the worsening of the state of health that affects the quality of life.” A definition that the Government intends to resume in an amendment.
“This corresponds to patients at the end of their life that have an extremely committed vital prognosis and suffer unbearable and refractory pain in treatments,” said Catherine Vautrin, anxious to disarm criticism.
After committing in 2022 to trust a reflection on the subject to a citizen convention, Emmanuel Macron had presented in March 2024 the main lines of a bill at the end of life. But the dissolution of the National Assembly stopped its exam.
Subject to a strong pressure from the deputies, François Bayrou once again put the job in the profession, but when the bill was sawing in two, to leave the deputies to vote for one text but not for the other.
Source: BFM TV
