The question tormented them to the end. Will their report be read by their ” fellow citizens “ ? Such is the ambition of the 184 members of the citizens’ convention on the end of life who published on Sunday April 2 a document of more than 150 pages and 146 proposals. It was adopted after a solemn vote of 92% (162 votes for, out of 176 voters) in the hemicycle of the Palais d’Iéna, at the end of the last working session at the headquarters of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE). The report is intended “a swatch of opinions” and does not claim to provide a unambiguous vision.
Wanted by Emmanuel Macron to be the pivot of a “national debate on the end of life” which he launched in September 2022, the citizens’ convention was to answer a question posed by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne: “Is the end-of-life support framework adapted to the different situations encountered or should any changes be introduced? “.
At the end of twenty-seven days of work spread over four months, after around sixty hearings with experts, representatives of religions, philosophers, doctors and caregivers and after a succession of votes, the citizens selected at random to be representative of the French population responded to 97% than the “support framework” current should ” evolve “. First, due to “inequal access to end-of-life support” in France. Second, in raison de “the absence of satisfactory answers within the current framework for certain end-of-life situations.
New proposals
This double observation leads them to propose, as a priority, to improve the “existing framework” but also to open the door to a change in French legislation. At 76%, the members of the convention are in favor of access to assisted suicide and euthanasia “according to certain conditions and at the end of a marked route”.
The first part of the report sets out to define the conditions for improving support for end-of-life patients within the framework of current legislation, the Claeys-Leonetti law of February 2, 2016. Conventional is the development of access to palliative care, this medicine that treats the pain and suffering of incurable patients. They set out 65 proposals. Some appear in other official reports on the subject, others are unpublished: the report pleads for the establishment of “an enforceable right guaranteed to everyone” access to palliative care.
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