Gambling on Life and Death: Euthanasia Back on French Agenda

Michel Barnier’s government has announced its intention to resume debates on euthanasia which were interrupted by the dissolution of the National Assembly in June. While some had been tempted to describe the new team in place since September as ‘right-wing’, the proof is in the pudding on this issue of its ideological continuity with Emmanuel Macron’s camp.

When the dissolution of the National Assembly was requested by the president of the republic, it interrupted the examination of a bill allowing the introduction of euthanasia and assisted suicide in France. Prime Minister Michel Barnier, bowing to pressure from the pro-euthanasia lobby, announced that he wanted to relaunch the procedure and put a new bill on the Assembly’s agenda as early as December this year. Interviewed on France 2 public television at the beginning of October, the prime minister expressed both his personal support for a law authorising euthanasia and assisted suicide and his eagerness to see the project through.

The issue of euthanasia is far from being unanimously supported within the ‘common base’ formed by Macron’s supporters and the centre-right MPs on whom Barnier intends to rely to support his policy. But according to the Prime Minister’s entourage, this is a “strong demand from Macronist MPs” that he must take into account. Le Figaro points out that this is the second time since his arrival in government that Barnier has given in to the injunctions of the Left on societal issues, as when he publicly ‘reassured’ former prime minister Gabriel Attal that he was sympathetic to LGBT demands or on abortion.

Sovereigntist Philippe de Villiers published an article in Le Journal du Dimanche denouncing the return of euthanasia to the National Assembly, on the initiative of a prime minister who was originally considered to belong to the traditional right. The Barnier government has been branded ‘conservative’ and ‘Manif pour Tous’ (named after the anti-gay marriage campaign of 2013-2014, in which two of its ministers took part) by a whole fringe of the Left and centre, so it responds by giving pledges of its progressivism—pledges that will in any case never satisfy the Left.

A kind of unhealthy blackmail is being put in place within this common base, denounced by Christian editorialist Erwan Le Morhedec, which could be summed up in these terms: euthanasia versus immigration. “When the culture of compromise leads to dishonour,” (Quand la culture du compromise devient une basse compromission)— according to the La Croix contributor.

Some ‘right-wing’ MPs may think they’re playing a long game here, but it’s a highly questionable bargain. First of all, life shouldn’t be the object of a political gamble. Furthermore, everyone knows very well that the content of the euthanasia law will be eminently dangerous, while the immigration law may well be devoid of any substance. Erwan Le Morhedec declared:

Will the Right take responsibility for abandoning the sick and our parents for the sake of a few deportations? Will the Left accept the price paid for euthanasia? Is this what we can expect from the Barnier government, this much-vaunted culture of compromise: mutual alignment with the lowest ethical standards?

For the time being, no precise legislative timetable has been communicated, and it is not known what form the new text submitted to MPs for consideration will take, even if it is likely to include most of the provisions already contained in the bill tabled by centrist MP Olivier Falorni and examined in the spring.

When he was still a senator and not yet minister of the interior, Bruno Retailleau considered the current debates on euthanasia to be “very dangerous.” Today, his head of government says he “personally agrees” with the bill debated a few weeks ago and he won’t move. Let’s be clear: the law will pass, the Left will have triumphed on this issue as on so many others, and the pseudo-right in government will, once again, have been perfectly useless.