The results are clear. Three quarters of the participants in the citizens’ convention on the end of life voted in favor of active assistance in dying, recalled this Monday morning Emmanuel Macron, who received the 185 people who made it up.
“My personal opinion, like that of many French people, can evolve”, first explained the Head of State, recalling that he also had to, to legislate on the subject, rely on “a desire for appeasement as President of the Republic.
A French model
“I ask the government (…) to carry out a work of co-construction on the basis of this solid reference, which is that of the convention, and of all the stakeholders”, he claimed. The objective: to propose a law by the end of the summer of 2023, announced Emmanuel Macron. The idea is to “trace a new milestone” in the French end-of-life model.
In a report validated on Sunday, the members of the convention had answered “yes” to three quarters to an “active aid in dying”, concretely assisted suicide or euthanasia, by however matching their positions with significant restrictions. But “I must not deduce the opinion of society from your answers”, however nuanced the Head of State.
Current legislation, set by the Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016, allows caregivers to irreversibly sedate patients near death, whose suffering is intolerable. But it does not go so far as to authorize assisted suicide (the patient administers the lethal product himself) or euthanasia (a caregiver injects it).
In addition, Emmanuel Macron’s speech on the end of life was an opportunity for him to express his desire to set up a “ten-year national plan” for pain management and palliative care.