In an open letter to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, published in La Tribune on Sunday, MPs are calling for the bill to begin examining the bill on the end of life just after the text is presented to the Council of Ministers in February, for a vote "by the end of 2024".
In this letter, on the initiative of MP Olivier Falorni, a member of the centrist Modem group and a fervent supporter of the "right to die with dignity", representatives of nine parliamentary political groups (Modem, Renaissance, Horizon, LR, PS, LFI, Ecologists, PCF, Liot) affirm that "the necessary time has been taken" to work on the subject, in particular within a Citizens' Convention on the end of life. and that "every guarantee is now given to start an orderly and informed debate in Parliament".
They say they can no longer "accept further postponements of the arrival of the bill in Parliament", in view of the "heartbreaking testimonies of people suffering from incurable diseases who are in the grip of unstoppable suffering". They "could not understand that parliamentary work should be postponed because of elections that will not impact national representation," they continued, referring to the European elections in June.
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«A perfectly reasonable one-year lead time»
They want to be able to start examining the text at first reading "just after its presentation to the Council of Ministers, as early as February, to lead to the vote on a text by the end of 2024", judging that "a period of one year to vote on this law" is "perfectly reasonable in view of the preparatory work carried out", and with regard to other examinations of major societal laws, such as voluntary termination of pregnancy (voted in two months) or marriage for all (six months).
At the end of December, Emmanuel Macron spoke of the presentation of a text "in February" after the announcement "in January" of a ten-year strategic plan on palliative care. On Friday, during the handover of power, the new Minister of Health and Labour, Catherine Vautrin, assured that she would not forget "this great subject of the end of life", without saying more.
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In addition, MEPs specify that "the parliamentary work will lead us to deepen a complementarity that we believe is essential" between "the need to considerably develop palliative care" and "the possibility of a right to be assisted in dying in circumstances of last resort".