The Portuguese President, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced on Wednesday January 4 that he had seized the Constitutional Court to have it analyze the law authorizing euthanasia passed in early December by the left-wing majority in Parliament.
The highest judicial body in the country will thus have to decide on the new version of a text that it had retorted in March 2021, judging then that the law governing “
medically assisted death
” used terms that were too imprecise.
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Parliament passed a law on December 9 that would place Portugal among the handful of European countries that have legalized euthanasia, in the wake of Belgium and the Netherlands.
If the law is considered unconstitutional, it will be sent back to Parliament so that it can reformulate it.
Otherwise, the president will still be able to veto it, but this would be overcome by a second vote of the deputies.
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