The subject has been debated for years. Assisted suicide, euthanasia, aid in dying… Although the terms are numerous and widely debated, a question arises in France: should France, like some of its neighbors, support patients with serious illnesses, towards the death ? This Sunday, March 10, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron announced that a bill on the question of “assisted dying” will be presented next April before the Council of Ministers. The aid will nevertheless be subject to “strict conditions”, warns the head of state.
Questioned this Monday morning on the set of the Great Europe 1-CNews interview, judges that this announcement is in reality only a political strategy, only a few weeks before the European elections. “I believe that no one is fooled by the moment in which this announcement comes. We are on the eve of a European election. We see the President of the Republic engaging the country in an infinitely complex debate, at a time when we should to be able to concentrate precisely on the challenge of the next three months, on this challenge for Europe which is absolutely decisive”, he judges.
Treat suffering
“Our state is facing immense challenges today and in a certain way, it is expected by the French where it is necessary to resolve the immediate problems of daily life, the most urgent problems. I am thinking of the question of “school, the question of purchasing power, security, health”, he lists.
“I think that the French would approach the question of the end of life differently. If they were certain that France had the means to properly care for all those who need it,” he continues, even though the French hospital system has experienced large-scale strikes in recent years. Caregivers denounce in particular the management of hospitals, the lack of resources and even salaries that are not attractive enough.
“The facts are that in France, today, every day, you have 500 people who need palliative care and who do not have access to it. You have people who suffer and who are not cared for as we should and as we could because we know how to treat suffering”, underlines François-Xavier Bellamy.
Towards deviations?
The MEP is particularly concerned about the abuses that could exist in the event of the legalization of end-of-life assistance. The Head of State promised a strict framework on the subject, including the essential consent of the patient and “a major role” for the medical team.
“The truth is that the president renounces the third way. He renounces the French model. He says that we are going to build a French model of the end of life. But the French model of the end of life is is the one that had been established by the Léonetti law”. This law, passed in the 2000s and amended in 2016, makes it possible to relieve the suffering of patients, thanks to palliative care and to avoid relentless therapeutic treatment. “Rather than investing in this fundamental subject, he decides to adopt what is not in fact the French model, but the Belgian model. (…) But in the short term, there will be deviations,” he concludes.