Aid in dying: the Minister of Health confirms the entry into force of the law in January 2027

The law creating a right to assisted dying, under conditions, will come into force “in January 2027, as planned,” Minister of Health Stéphanie Rist declared on Tuesday.

“We have always said that these decrees will come out in January. They will come out in January, with application of the law in January 2027, as planned,” she indicated on franceinfo, questioned to find out why this law, definitively passed in mid-July, had still not come into force.

The decrees implementing the law will be particularly scrutinized. Some opponents hoped this summer that they would prevent possible “drifts” or “correct” certain aspects of the text. “We will submit them to the administrative judge,” Jean-Marie Le Méné, president of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, also assured in mid-July. After years of debate, the right to assisted dying, a major societal reform of Emmanuel Macron's presidency, was ratified on July 15 by the French Parliament.

A conditional right, contested by the Church

The law creates a right to assisted dying, under several conditions, for certain patients, allowing them to administer a lethal product in the presence of a caregiver. If, and only if, the patient cannot physically perform the procedure, the caregiver can take care of it. Several conditions must be combined. The patient must be an adult, French or a long-term resident, suffer from a “serious and incurable” illness in a terminal or “advanced” phase, suffer unbearably physically and be capable of expressing an informed choice until the last moment.

The Constitutional Council, although it validated the law, expressed some reservations. In particular, he extended the conscience clause to caregivers who refuse to participate in the lethal gesture to an entire establishment if there is an alternative at the local level, meeting a request from the Catholic world. This law on assisted dying was widely criticized by the Church of France, which denounced “a serious anthropological rupture”.