While a bill instituting euthanasia in France is due to be presented to MPs shortly, French President Emmanuel Macron is still hesitating over the method to be adopted and the content of the reform. On Wednesday, November 8th, he attended the 250th anniversary celebrations of France’s largest Masonic lodge, the Grand Orient de France, where he was encouraged to speed up work on this sensitive issue.
Since the campaign for the presidential elections in spring 2022, President Macron has made no secret of his intention to change French end-of-life law, moving closer to the Belgian ‘model.’ But as the content of the reform becomes clearer and the deadline for a vote draws nearer, he is showing himself to be increasingly hesitant and anxious to avoid tension on a subject that is philosophically, humanely, and politically delicate to decide.
At the end of September, according to the Élysée Palace, Pope Francis, who was visiting Marseille, raised the issue of euthanasia in private talks with the French president. The pope denied having done so on this occasion but acknowledged having raised the subject during his previous meeting with Emmanuel Macron in October 2022. In front of journalists, however, he reiterated in unambiguous terms his profound hostility to any form of “active assistance in dying”: “you don’t play with life,” he said, denouncing the temptation of a “humanist euthanasia.”
A “humanist advance” is precisely the term used by the Grand Orient de France, France’s largest Masonic lodge, to describe the reform designed to pave the way for euthanasia in France. When Emmanuel Macron visited the lodge’s headquarters in Paris on Wednesday, he was the third president of the French Republic to make an official visit, after Emile Loubet under the Third Republic, and more recently François Hollande. Macron also visited the lodge in 2016 when he was Minister of Economy.
During his visit, the issue of the rise in antisemitism in France since the Hamas attacks on Israel at the beginning of October was raised. The Grand Master of the Grand Orient Guillaume Trichard, highlighted the openness of the lodge to Jews right from its origins at the end of the 18th century, at a time when Jews did not yet have French citizenship, granted to them in 1791 by the Constituent Assembly. “Attacking a Jew is always an attempt to undermine the political project that recognises him as free and equal, it is always an attempt to undermine the Republic,” added President Macron in his speech on the spot, before a gathering of around 300 dignitaries from the main French lodges.
The president was then asked about his desire to change the law on the end of life. His hosts expressed their concern that the president’s approach was still too hesitant: “words must be stronger,” they insisted, whereas the president had mentioned in previous speeches, by way of example, that euthanasia should be the subject of a referendum, as the constitutional reform he plans to carry out would allow.
In front of the assembled Masons, Macron promised that the “right to die with dignity” would be the subject of a “law of freedom and respect.” He then explicitly thanked them “for the contributions produced in conjunction with the government, which will enable this text to move forward in the coming months,” thus acknowledging their decisive role in the current procedure.
On Tuesday, November 14th, a working meeting was held with the president and the prime minister, bringing together the main ministers concerned, in particular the minister for health and the minister for solidarity.
The final text is due to be presented to the Council of Ministers in December, but the president’s entourage claims that the date could still change. In the circle of insiders working on the law, not everyone has the same point of view, nor the same interest in the subject. According to Le Figaro, the text provides for the legalisation of “active assistance in dying,” but raises the question of an “exception for euthanasia” for patients unable to administer a lethal product themselves. Some “arbitration” is still needed on ethical issues that the president is reluctant to tackle. His favourite political mantra—en même temps, at the same time—seems difficult to guarantee once you come to the question of life and death.
