Overview
- The Senate’s Social Affairs Committee recast the Assembly’s “right to aid to die” as a more limited “medical assistance to die” that is no longer framed as an individual right.
- Access would be restricted to cases where a patient’s vital prognosis is short term, replacing the Assembly’s broader criterion of a serious, incurable illness in an advanced phase.
- The committee text still permits use of a lethal substance by the patient or, in specified situations, administration by a physician or a nurse.
- Lawmakers also advanced the palliative-care proposal but removed the creation of an enforceable right to such care, citing concerns about capacity and patient expectations.
- Plenary debate is scheduled for January 20 with a solemn vote expected January 28, after which the National Assembly is set to reconsider the texts in February as the government presses the reform as a second-term priority.