As the president of the republic shows signs of having to resubmit the decriminalizing death medical aid certificate for preventive examination by the Constitutional Court (TC), the constitutionalists heard by DN admit that there is a lot of “uncertainty” as to whether the law will pass the control of the judges of Ratton Palace.
If the new law actually reaches the TC – either by the hand of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa or by the PSD, which has already admitted to asking for successive inspection – constitutionalist Teresa Violante reminds DN that the current composition of the court is no longer the same and that the new judges may no longer have the understanding of their predecessors, who appreciated the previous diploma in 2021. “We’re not sure if the people who left and those who came in voted exactly the same way. There is room for uncertainty,” he says.
Teresa Violante also underlines that there is a margin of “uncertainty” about the amendments that were intended to respond to the President of the Republic’s veto power and the TC’s verdict, about the indefinite drafts to request assisted death, such as that of “serious and incurable disease; injury definitive and of extreme seriousness and without possibility of cure”.
The constitutionalist believes that it is precisely in this area that the “greatest risk of an advantage” is played by the TC. “In the previous judgment, the Court tried to take the legislature down a path that the legislature did not want, and the PR also tried this in the political veto. That the legal regime approved was only for situations where people were already very close.” And that is not the choice of the legislature,” argues the constitutionalist, admitting that it is “likely that “most judges tend to consider the validity of assisted death only in cases of imminent death”.
However, Teresa Violante argues that this regime that the TC and Marcelo will target “is not what has been adopted in the legal orders closest to us”. As is the case in Italy, where the law was changed following a ruling by the Constitutional Court on the case of a man who had been paralyzed for 10 years. The same applies to the Netherlands, Belgium and the legal regime that came into force in Austria this year.
Jorge Bacelar Gouveia is more definitive in his certainty that the new law decriminalizing medically assisted death is unconstitutional. The constitutionalist says that the problem of “indeterminate concepts” remains, such as that of definite harm,” and that of “transferring the power of decision to the state.” “The state cannot have life-or-death power over a person ” , he says.
In addition, Bacelar Gouveia emphasizes that the new diploma suffers from a formal unconstitutionality, as the Autonomous Region of Madeira was not heard as it should have been, as it was a new legislative process. “The TC has been looking into unconstitutional laws that have not had a hearing on matters affecting the autonomous regions, as is the case with euthanasia, which will have to be implemented in the regional health system,” he says.
The diploma must go to Belém in the week after Christmas. And Marcelo paves the way for his decision. On Thursday, at Catholic University, and in front of two key PSD figures fighting against decriminalization – the predecessor Cavaco Silva and the former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho – the President of the Republic believed that Catholics are less present in collective decisions in Portugal and some indifferent to debates on topics such as euthanasia, “reality that makes the judiciary called upon to arbitrate more thorny”.
“The first referendum on voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) showed how a cultural upheaval was approaching in a society in which the Catholic Church had diminished its influence, especially in sectors of cultural expression, in the media, in youth and in national political decisions , regionally and locally. And the second referendum on the IVG confirmed the lived process,” he reflected. According to Marcelo, “in the government, in the laws, their creation and application”, however, “manifests the profound change in national life”. “The so-called medically assisted death constitutes the most recent example of this process of civic culture. And it is not even the current absence of moderates in the political decision-making phase – in fact widespread in the democracies that surround us – the great cause of what was lived Another: Across all quadrants, the lesser presence or relevance of Catholics in collective decisions had become a common feature,” he insisted.
Source: DN
