The PSD will submit the request to the Constitutional Court for successive inspection of the diploma that decriminalized euthanasia after the parliamentary vacation in September, the bank’s deputy president Paula Cardoso told Lusa.
According to the Social Democratic deputy, the application has already been completed, but it is necessary to “inform the deputies about the basic principles” so that those who want to can register, which would no longer be possible this week, when only a few parliamentary committees are at work.
“To communicate the reasons behind our request to colleagues in the parliamentary group, we will have to wait until the beginning of the legislative session, in September,” he added, refusing to provide details of the document before sharing it with the parliamentary group.
On May 12, the parliament confirmed the decree on death with medical assistance, vetoed by the President of the Republic, by a total of 129 votes in favour, 81 against and one abstention, promulgating it.
The overwhelming majority of deputies from the PS, IL, BE and representatives from PAN and Livre, as well as eight PSD parliamentarians, voted in favour.
The vast majority of the PSD bank, the Chega and PCP factions, as well as four PS deputies were against the diploma. The decree also had an abstention by a PSD deputy.
Days earlier, the Social Democratic parliamentary leader, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, had made it known that the bank would not officially proceed with this request for constitutionality verification (as there has always been freedom to vote on this issue), but he invited the deputies to do so, and assured that he would sign it, in a task eventually taken over by the bank’s vice-chairman Paula Cardoso.
According to the constitution, “one-tenth of the deputies of the Assembly of the Republic”, that is, 23 parliamentarians, may request successive inspection of the constitutionality of a law in force.
In this case, the judges of the Constitutional Court have no deadline to rule, unlike what happens in preventive inspection (before a diploma becomes law), where they only have 25 days to make a decision.
The law decriminalizing medical assistance in the event of death, known as the Euthanasia Law, was published May 25 in Diário da República and took effect 30 days after the ordinance, which must be approved by the government within a period of about three months from that date (August 25).
Source: DN
