A right to assisted dying as early as July? Supporters of the end-of-life bill want to believe it, as a second reading begins Wednesday in committee at the Assembly, a week after the Senate rejected this major societal reform.
Launched in 2022 by Emmanuel Macron, it has had a tumultuous legislative journey due to recent political upheavals since the dissolution.
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The head of state reaffirmed his intention to see this legislative debate concluded before the presidential election, and if possible this year.
On Wednesday, a new step is taken with the start of the second reading examination in Parliament.
“I have no doubt that parliamentarians will continue to affirm their desire to open up this new right. This is a text that has been awaited and I will do everything to ensure that it can be definitively adopted before the summer of 2026,” said Yaël Braun-Pivet during her New Year’s address to the press.
Unlike the Senate, which is dominated by a more conservative right wing on social issues, the National Assembly has so far shown itself to be in favour of this reform by adopting it largely in July in the first reading (305 votes against 199).
It is from this version of the text that the members of the social affairs committee will start again on Wednesday from 09:30 until Friday, with more than 600 amendments to discuss.
The assembly will take it up on February 16, before a formal vote scheduled for February 24, at the same time as the more consensual bill on palliative care, examined in parallel.
The text by MP Olivier Falorni of the MoDem group, who has been committed to this cause for decades, creates "a right to die" consisting of "authorizing and accompanying" a patient who wishes to administer a lethal substance to themselves, or to have it administered to them if they are not "physically able to do so".
This amounts to a very regulated legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, although these words do not appear explicitly in the text.
"Compromise is necessary, but not a compromise of a compromise of a compromise, which would result in a law for nothing," Mr. Falorni warned to LCP on the eve of the start of the examination.
While recalling that he had renounced, in the name of compromise, the possibility of requesting this right in advance directives, the MP is opposed to overly broad restrictions which would render the law unenforceable.
– Calendar battle –
Mr. Falorni also believes that adoption is possible in the summer, with a Senate entry in the spring, and after a "probable" failure of an agreement between the two chambers, a final word given by the government to the Assembly.
“People are fed up with the length of the process. There have been debates for years, a citizens’ convention that clearly expressed itself on the subject, and yet so far the text has not been finalized,” he argued.
A version not shared by those opposed to this new right.
In an opinion piece published Monday in the JDD, the weekly newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, a group of right-wing MPs denounced the "haste" of the examination.
"Three days of debate in committee. Five days in plenary session. Less than seventy-two hours to reread, understand, amend a text that commits us to our relationship with care, vulnerability and death. This is a method unworthy of the challenge," they write.
They accuse this timetable of being driven by "personal ambition".
The first signatory, LR MP Justine Gruet, leader of her group on this issue, has tabled numerous amendments aimed at restricting the scope of the text.
For example, she advocates the creation of an establishment clause, allowing structures to refuse the practice of assisted dying within their walls.
Even though the vast majority of the LR group is against the text, according to a source within the group, it will grant, like other political formations, a freedom of vote to its members on this subject which transcends political divides and touches on the intimate convictions of each individual.
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