Arthur de Laborde, edited by Laura Laplaud
After making it a campaign promise, Emmanuel Macron intends to set up a citizens’ convention to bring together all the actors involved in the issue of euthanasia. He would have confided to a deputy his wish to pass a law next year.
The question of euthanasia is making a comeback in the public debate. The executive is preparing to make announcements on the subject, confirmed government spokesman Olivier Véran after the Council of Ministers on Wednesday. A report from the CCNE (National Consultative Ethics Committee) will be delivered “at the beginning of next week and a consultation will be opened in stride”.
Towards a citizens’ convention on euthanasia
The Élysée is working on the announcement of a citizens’ convention on euthanasia. Emmanuel Macron thus wishes to bring together all the actors and is betting that a debate will make it possible to appease this very divisive subject. Method and schedule will therefore be revealed in the next few days.
But the president would have even gone further on Friday on the occasion of the presentation of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor to the singer and actress Line Renaud. “Your fight for the right to die with dignity resembles you and obliges us. Dictated by kindness, demand and this unique intuition that this is the time to do, so we will do,” he said. He would also have confided to the various-left deputy Olivier Falorni, his wish to have a law passed next year: “We reminded him that we could not wait any longer. He replied that it was not a question of to always postpone this great law but to do it in 2023”, specifies the deputy.
A promise already made and already broken
Private statements, minimized by the Elysée, but which make opponents of euthanasia jump. They fear that everything will be decided even before the citizens’ convention, as explained at the microphone of Europe 1 Tugdual Derville, spokesperson for Alliance Vita. “What is worrying is when you consult casually and then apply what you have already decided,” he says. “The way the president has already expressed himself worries us a lot, so we will not only be consulted if we can, but also mobilize ourselves.”
Reopening the debate on euthanasia was in any case a promise made by candidate Macron when presenting his program for 2022. But he had already made this promise during his first five-year term, before abandoning it.