Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has not heeded the call of the presidents of the parliaments of the Azores and Madeira, who complain that they have been ignored by the Assembly of the Republic in the euthanasia diploma, but José Manuel Rodrigues, who represents the Legislative Assembly of Madeira leads, admits to proceed on its own and to request successive inspection of the diploma, in case the law comes into force.
The presidents of regional legislative assemblies are one of the entities that have the prerogative of asking the Constitutional Court (TC) for a successive inspection of the constitutionality of a law. According to the Constitution, this can be done when the request claims “violation of the rights of the Autonomous Regions” or the “request for an illegalization is based on violation” of the political-administrative statute of the two Regions. To DN, and in view of the presidential decision not to raise the issue with the TC, José Manuel Rodrigues says to “maintain the view that the Assembly of the Republic should have listened to the Legislative Assemblies, as it does with all the legislation it produces”, under the terms of the Constitution – which stipulates that “the organs of sovereignty shall always hear the organs of the regional government in respect of matters within their competence in relation to the Autonomous Regions”. The President of the Parliament of Madeira states that “there are rulings by the Constitutional Court for and against this position”, but adds that “in a matter of this importance all the representatives of the people must be heard”. The President of the Azores Regional Legislative Assembly, Luís Garcia, declined to comment, claiming that the matter is still being analysed.
In addition to the presidents of the legislative assemblies, the regional deputies and the presidents of the government of the two archipelagos can also question the constitutionality of the law. The same privilege has one-tenth of the deputies (that is, 23) in the Assembly of the Republic: in fact, the PSD has already admitted to sending the diploma for successive inspection by the TC. By putting the different pieces together, it is practically inevitable that medically assisted death will return at least a third time in the constitution (in this scenario without a fixed time, since the successive inspection, which can only be requested after the entry into force of the law, is not subject to time limits).
Last week, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa again sent the diploma decriminalizing medically assisted death to the TC, asking the judges of the Ratton Palace to assess whether the current text meets the requirements of certainty and legal certainty that the judges-advisers themselves demanded. March last year, when the diploma went to the Constitutional Court for the first time and in the end did not fall. On the way, the request was addressed to Belém by José Manuel Rodrigues and Luís Garcia, who had appealed to the president to raise the issue of not hearing the Autonomous Regions. In the message published on the Presidency’s website, Marcelo, when sending the diploma to the TC, states that “according to the constant jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, in the material regime of the diploma no specific importance seems to arise or special difference of the autonomous regions” in this case. For the President of the Republic, the preparation of the “additional diploma that can refer to the regional health services, which are autonomous, must of course involve the competent public authorities of the Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira”.
“It’s Something Unprecedented”
A view with which the constitutionalist Jorge Bacelar Gouveia – who has defended that not participating in the audition of the Autonomous Regions is against the Constitution – strongly disagrees. “I regret that the President of the Republic is not responding to a request from the presidents of the two regional parliaments.I had never seen it,” criticizes, arguing that this matter should be clarified now, regardless of the TC’s verdict, under penalty of being later, with the law already in place.
Otherwise, Bacelar Gouveia states that the reasoning for the request to the TC, by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, is “expectable”, but adds that the head of state “could have gone further in signaling doubts” – “limited question whether the new text corresponds” to what was worded in the previous opinion of the TC.
“There is insufficient compaction of concepts”
Constitutionalist Paulo Otero follows Belém’s decision: “The president has done a good job, what is at stake is not a problem of unconstitutionality, but of illegality. It is not a direct or indirect violation of the constitution, but of the rights are enshrined in the statutes” of the autonomous regions. As for the arguments of the President of the Republic, Paulo Otero believes that Marcelo has chosen the right path and has no doubt that the issues raised will find support in the Ratton Palace.
For Otero, the concepts used in the medically assisted death certificate remain vague and indeterminate, now with the aggravating factor of a text “more indulgent, more comprehensive of medically assisted death”. As an example he gives the concept of “suffering of great intensity” – of “nuclear” importance in the text – which “uses the terms to be defined in the definition”. The diploma defines “suffering of great intensity” as “physical, psychological and spiritual suffering, resulting from a serious and incurable illness or permanent injury of extreme seriousness, of great intensity, persistent, persistent or permanent and considered by the person to be unbearable” . “We come to know that suffering with great intensity is suffering with great intensity”, ironizes the constitutionalist. “There is insufficient densification, insufficient definition of concepts. We are in the domain of the first fundamental rights and that is incompatible with this insufficient densification,” concludes Paulo Otero.
Source: DN
