The French National Assembly  has definitively approved the law  legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide, culminating one of the most controversial reforms championed by President Emmanuel Macron. The legislation, which introduces the so-called “right to help one die,” passed despite opposition from a large part of the healthcare community.

In a decision that marks a turning point in the bioethical and social history of France, the National Assembly has ignored the  warnings of 800,000  health professionals who, as early as 2023, were calling for quality palliative care instead of induced death.

After a particularly complex and polarized parliamentary journey, the project – rejected twice by the conservative-majority Senate – finally passed its third and final reading in the Lower House on July 15, 2026, with 291 votes in favor and 241 against.

With this vote, France joins the group of European nations that already permit euthanasia, including Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Assisted suicide, in which the patient is helped to end their life by administering lethal cocktails, is also authorized in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, though in the latter case under very restricted circumstances.

However, the promulgation of the law will not be immediate, as it is subject to review by the Constitutional Council.

It was Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu himself who referred the text to the Constitutional Council to examine its conformity with the Constitution, considering that there are doubts about critical aspects such as the meager reflection period stipulated for the patient (of only two days), the provisions relating to form templates  for adults under legal guardianship and the role of conscientious objection of healthcare professionals and centers.

A foretold story: Macron’s proposal in 2024

This legislative trend is not surprising. As we analyzed in a news article  published in our Observatory in March 2024 , the French president’s roadmap had already been clearly laid out in an interview with the prestigious French newspapers  Libération  and  La Croix . On that occasion, Emmanuel Macron announced an imminent bill that, using the euphemism “help in dying,” was intended to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, promising in return an investment of €1 billion in palliative care over ten years.

At that time, the Bioethics Observatory of the UCV (Central University of Venezuela)  warned  in the media about the inescapable danger of the “slippery slope” that accompanies the legal regulation of euthanasia. As we stated then, “clinical and international experience demonstrates that legislation that begins with strict restrictions ends up relaxing its measures over time, facilitating its application to all kinds of people and even, as happens in Belgium, to elderly people who have not formally requested it.” It should also be pointed out that calling euthanasia “assisted dying” is simply another euphemism for anti-life policies: it is about killing, which reflects a utilitarian mentality that considers some lives “unworthy of being lived.”

The ignored request for 800,000 healthcare workers in 2023

The advancement of this legislation also reflects a worrying disregard for the French medical community itself. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, in 2023, thirteen organizations representing 800,000 French healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, and assistants)  spoke out  against this measure in response to  Opinion 139  of the French National Consultative Council on Ethics.

In their forceful  document entitled  “Can Causing Death Be Considered Care? ” , healthcare professionals denounced the precarious state of the healthcare system and demanded that the French government prioritize “filling the glaring gaps in our care model.” They argued that patients’ requests for death often stem from “uncontrolled symptoms, persistent moral distress,” and the “need for better care.” Furthermore, the healthcare professionals asserted, based on their experience, that “with quality palliative care, the desire to die disappears in the vast majority of cases.” However, to justify the law, the government chose to ignore the position of healthcare professionals and instead rely on the opinions of 184 citizens randomly selected to form an advisory convention.

Conditions of the new law: Guarantees or an open door?

The text approved by the Assembly and promoted by MP Olivier Falorni establishes that “assisted dying” should generally be carried out by the person themselves (assisted suicide) and, exceptionally, if the patient is physically incapacitated, by a doctor or nurse (euthanasia). To access this procedure, several requirements must be met simultaneously:

• Be of legal age and have French nationality or reside legally in the country.
• Having the full capacity for discernment and being able to express one’s will freely and consciously (which excludes patients with advanced Alzheimer’s or other neurodegenerative diseases without cognitive capacity).
• Suffering from a serious and incurable disease with a compromised life prognosis in the short or medium term and in an advanced or terminal stage.
• To suffer physical or psychological distress resulting from the illness that the patient considers unbearable and that cannot be relieved.

As a key limitation, the law specifies that purely psychological suffering, if not associated with a serious underlying physical condition, does not grant the right to assisted suicide. The procedure requires a physician to issue a reasoned decision within a maximum of fifteen days, following a panel of experts. If the decision is favorable, the patient will have only two days to “reflect” and confirm their decision to die.

As we have already seen in other cases, these limits will become blurred until the door to euthanasia is opened to anyone who wants to stop living, claiming psychological suffering, as already happens in Spain.

Social fracture and rejection of the Church

The enactment of this law has had a profound media and social impact. President Emmanuel Macron used the  social network  X  to celebrate what he considered a “constructive and respectful debate” on a matter “as intimate as it is serious, touching on life, suffering, and dignity.”

The strongest institutional reaction has come from  the French Episcopal Conference , which has described the new law as a threat to “the most vulnerable, a grave rupture in our country’s history that destroys the long tradition of care whose vocation is to alleviate suffering.” The bishops have issued a painful social warning: “This legislation will alter our relationship with vulnerability and old age, and the poorest risk being the first to pay the price.” According to the bishops, many people may request euthanasia not out of a genuine desire to die, but because they feel like a burden to their children or grandchildren.

With this decision, France opens a new stage in its legislation on end-of-life care, the ethical, social and health consequences of which are expected to continue to be the subject of intense debate.

Bioethical assessment

As we at the Bioethics Observatory have always maintained, legalizing euthanasia establishes a false alternative to  comprehensive palliative care  , which truly dignifies human beings until the end of their days. True compassion does not consist of ending the suffering of those who are alive, but rather in accompanying them, alleviating their pain, and demonstrating that their life remains infinitely valuable.

The culture of death, within which both this new step and the inclusion of the right to abortion in the French Constitution are inscribed, far from representing an advance in the conquest of freedoms and respect for human dignity, represents a real setback, whereby the strong subjugate the weak, the most vulnerable, who, instead of providing them with protection and care, are eliminated, without their consent in the case of abortion, or with it, as happens with euthanasia.

True progress should be measured by societies’ ability to protect the defenseless, care for the vulnerable, and dignify human life—not death—for those who suffer in all circumstances. Anything less represents a sad setback.

Julio Tudela. Cristina Castillo. Bioethics Observatory. Catholic University of Valencia