“It’s urgent.” The modern deputy apprentice Olivier Falorni, author of the texts on the end of life, raised the alarm on Saturday, October 18, after a new postponement of his examination in the Senate.
The bills on palliative care and the creation of assisted dying were to be examined starting this Monday, October 20, by the upper house. But the Senate presidents’ conference, which sets the agenda, ultimately did not reschedule this moment on the agenda, in particular due to an overloaded calendar linked to budget discussions.
“Not recognizing the emergency is a form of indecency,” denounced Olivier Falorni in France Inter, considering that it is “a form of sabotage that does not pronounce its name.”
“The majority group of LR [au Sénat] He is doing everything possible to prevent this debate from happening, he stated, calling on the executive to act. “The government has dedicated weeks to be able to include these two important texts on the Senate agenda.”
Towards a referendum?
Otherwise, Olivier Falorni proposes holding a referendum, as Emmanuel Macron had already suggested last May, “if at the end of the first reading there is a deadlock.”
“To prevent this referendum from becoming a plebiscite for or against the president, I believe it would be necessary to present the text that was adopted in a transpartisan manner by the National Assembly in May,” considered the centrist deputy.
Almost the entire Senate calendar is, at the moment, dedicated to examining the budget between mid-November and Christmas. The upper house of Parliament had initially planned two weeks of examination of these texts starting on October 7, but the fall of François Bayrou’s government caused a first postponement.
And this, before the new debates this Monday are canceled due to the resignation of Sébastien Lecornu, finally renamed prime minister a few days later.
This new postponement risks complicating the chances that this important social reform, initiated in 2022 by the President of the Republic, will be completed before the end of the five-year term. Two readings will be necessary in each chamber before its conclusion and the Senate, which leans to the right and has expressed certain reservations, may want to modify the text on assisted dying.
Source: BFM TV
