With the state budget process for 2023 completed and approved last Friday in a final global vote, the Assembly of the Republic this week resumed the agenda that had been suspended at the end of October. And he is preparing to close two controversial topics: the decriminalization of medically assisted death, which could be voted on this Friday, and the amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic.
Tomorrow there will be a vote on the decriminalization of euthanasia in the specialty (article by article) in the parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs and presumably follows the final global vote this Friday. A route that could be stopped if one party goes through with a new request for adjournment – which would already be the third, after Chega and PS. It should be remembered that at the end of October the Socialists postponed the adoption of the text until after the budget, in order to scrutinize the wording of the diploma and avoid further disappointments.
But in the first week or a little later, the diploma will go to Belém in December. It will be the third time that the decriminalization of medically assisted death falls into the hands of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa – in the first case, the diploma was blocked by the Constitutional Court’s declaration of unconstitutionality; the second, exactly a year ago, came up against the political veto of the President of the Republic, who then invoked the confusion of concepts in the text approved by the delegates, which alternately referred to “incurable and fatal disease”, “serious or incurable disease” and “serious and incurable disease”.
The diploma, which is based on bills from the PS, Bloco de Esquerda, Iniciativa Liberal and PAN, now returns to Belém, always using the phrase “serious and incurable illness” as a condition for access to medically assisted death. To which is added the “final injury of extreme gravity”, which was already included in the previous version and which remains unchanged. Wordings that do not contradict the reparations made by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the message he sent to the Assembly of the Republic at the time of the leadership, pointing to an extension of the situations to require medically assisted death , which would have been introduced between the first and second versions of the text. A claim that was rejected by the parties and ignored in the amendments now tabled.
But what should have been a surgical change to the text ended up being given more leeway, with the working group responsible for this issue moving ahead with two substantial changes already after the adoption of the text in general, in June, by 128 votes in favour. . The final version provides for a period of at least two months between the start of the process and the completion of the medically assisted death and requires psychological support to the applicant.
Revision of the Rules without an agreement in sight
Another topic that will be closed in the coming weeks is that of changes to the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic, the main point of which is the model of debates with the Prime Minister, which should enter into force on January 1, 2023. As the work nears completion, the positions of the parties remain irreconcilable: the majority of the opposition calls for the return of biweekly debates, while the PS proposes debates every two weeks, albeit alternately between ministers and the leader of the executive power. In other words, the Prime Minister’s presence in parliament is monthly, and the current question-and-answer format has also been changed to one where the government replies “at the end of each party’s intervention time”.
Speaking to DN, Social Democratic deputy Duarte Pacheco says he is “pessimistic” about the possibility of an agreement, stressing that if the trial is confirmed to end without an agreement between the two major parties, it will be “the first time this has happened”. Which leads the PSD parliamentarian to wonder whether it would not make sense to require a two-thirds majority of the deputies for amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic, in order to “prevent the majority at that time – the could be the PS or PSD – change the rules as you see fit”. “The rules should not be left at the mercy of a simple majority [116 deputados]but with a qualified majority,” defended Duarte Pacheco.
A third working group dealing with the parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs – on metadata – will continue and should extend until next year. Without being hindered by the upcoming constitutional review process and which will also focus on the issue of metadata, but from a completely different perspective: where the constitutional revision addresses access of information services to traffic data and location of equipment, the working group discusses the use of metadata by the police, for criminal investigation purposes. At issue is the ruling of the European Court of Justice, which invalidated the European Union directive that allowed the retention of this data for a period of one year for the purposes of criminal investigations.
Source: DN
