Paris, France, Feb 5, 2025 /
12:40 pm
French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s decision to split the controversial “end of life” bill in two — to separate the issue of “active assistance in dying” from that of palliative, which was announced Jan. 21 — has earned him the wrath of his own party officials, who have called into question his Catholic convictions.
Opponents of the original bill, whose debates were interrupted by the dissolution of the National Assembly last June, saw it, on the contrary, as a courageous choice that endeavors to respect the plurality of parliamentary opinions on these two centrally important social issues.
For President Emmanuel Macron, this bill was intended to be one of the flagship societal measures of his second term in office — along with the inclusion of the right to abortion in the French Constitution, formalized in March 2024 — to satisfy his progressive electoral base, largely in favor of euthanasia.
The bill on “accompanying the sick and the end of life,” initially presented to the Council of Ministers on April 10, 2024, and then to the National Assembly on May 27, encompassed two aspects: palliative care and support for the sick, and active assistance in dying — i.e., euthanasia and assisted suicide — for incurable illnesses and/or pain that cannot be relieved.
In particular, the text provided for the authorization of the provision to “a person who so requests a lethal substance, for self-administration or, if unable to do so, to be administered by a doctor, a nurse, a relative, or a voluntary person of his or her choice.”
“The bill debated before the dissolution would have made France one of the most extreme legislations in the world, by providing for the lethal act to be carried out by a close relative, exerting strong coercion on medical staff and providing for a procedure conducive to abuses and drifts,” Laurent Frémont, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris and co-founder of the Démocratie, éthique et solidarités association, told CNA.
Indeed, while the bill provided for a conscience clause for health care professionals, it did not apply to pharmacists, nor did it include any collective dimension for a health care service or establishment.
While the governmental instability that followed the June 9 European elections and the dissolution of the National Assembly bought time for opponents of active aid in dying, its promoters are seeking to make up for lost time by making it a political priority. Thus, since early November 2024, National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet has been urging the government to resume discussions on the bill no later than early February.
In taking up this request, Bayrou, prime minister since Dec. 13, 2024, nevertheless surprised his own political allies by announcing, at the end of January, that the original end-of-life text would finally be split into two. Parliamentary debates will therefore revolve around two separate bills, the first on palliative care, the second on active assistance in dying.
“We need to be able to vote on each of these two texts in a different way,” the centrist leader explained at the time of his announcement, highlighting that he had no intention of delaying the examination of the bill in Parliament.
This decision was welcomed by critics of the initial project, who saw a blatant antinomy between the two parts of the bill.
“Since the beginning of debates on the subject, Emmanuel Macron has attempted a particularly audacious ‘en même temps’ [‘at the same time’ — an expression often used by the French president] by announcing the advent of a ‘French end-of-life model’ based on both palliative care and induced death,” Frémont said.
“There can be no continuum between these two radically opposed practices. Induced death cannot be care, because it interrupts care by eliminating the person being cared for. Despite strong opposition from caregivers, this confusion was maintained during the debates that took place before the dissolution.”
The announcement also triggered an outcry among proponents of active aid in dying, who saw it as an attempt to postpone the debate indefinitely. They also pointed to the religious convictions of Bayrou, who has never made a secret of his Catholic faith.
“The prime minister is in the midst of a mystical enlightenment,” wrote the French Association for the Right to Die with Dignity in a press release, comparing him to “the preacher of a religious congregation” and inviting him to “set aside his religious beliefs and finally take an interest in the general interest of the French people.”
More nuanced, political figures in the presidential camp nonetheless considered that the politician’s judgment was clouded by his personal convictions, despite the fact that both he and his entourage insisted to the contrary.
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For columnist Guillaume Tabard, Bayrou has above all shown political astuteness by evading pressure from the president of the National Assembly and by aiming “to de-mine a heated subject without burying it.”
“By promising to separate the two subjects,” Frémont said, “François Bayrou is showing that he has grasped what is at stake in this debate. This will ensure that palliative care is not used as an excuse to legalize administered death in France.”
Solène Tadié is the Europe Correspondent for the National Catholic Register. She is French-Swiss and grew up in Paris. After graduating from Roma III University with a degree in journalism, she began reporting on Rome and the Vatican for Aleteia. She joined L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, where she successively worked for the French section and the Cultural pages of the Italian daily newspaper. She has also collaborated with several French-speaking Catholic media organizations. Solène has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
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