The law establishing assisted dying for people with a “serious and incurable” condition was definitively adopted and promulgated during the summer, yet its effective entry into force still hinges on a series of implementing decrees that the government has yet to publish.
The stakes were underscored this week by the death of Arnaud Denis, a 43-year-old actor and stage director, who died in Namur, Belgium, on Tuesday, September 22, under an assisted dying procedure. Denis had undergone surgery on a right inguinal hernia in July 2023, during which a polypropylene prosthesis was implanted — the start of what became relentless and unbearable pain.
Drafting Underway, but 2027 Target Hangs in the Balance
Questioned by franceinfo at the time of the law’s final adoption in July, the office of Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said work on the decrees had already begun. “Work is underway as of this summer to allow implementation in early 2027, under legally sound and fully secure conditions,” the minister’s entourage said at the time.
What the First Decrees Must Settle
A first decree is expected to set out the practical modalities of the request for assisted dying introduced by the law. Among the questions it must answer:
- How will the patient be informed of the procedure?
- What form must the request for assisted dying take?
- How will the medical profession verify that the person falls within the scope of the law?
These elements must be set down in writing, in consultation with health professionals.
A National Register and Oversight Commission
A second implementing decree will create a register recording, for each patient, information relating to “each stage of the procedure.” The regulatory text must define which health professional has access to which information and set out “the conditions under which this data may be processed for scientific research purposes, where applicable with the consent of the persons concerned.”
The file will be overseen by a commission of doctors and jurists whose composition will itself be fixed by decree. More broadly, the commission will be tasked with monitoring the application of the right to die, tracking possible breaches, and reporting on the use of assisted dying — in particular through an annual report and recommendations to the government and Parliament. “This monitoring and evaluation rely notably on the analysis of anonymized data and on the implementation of a sociological and ethical approach,” the law provides.
Another implementing decree concerns the registration, in a file, of each doctor’s or health professional’s wish to practise assisted dying or not. This register will be “accessible only to health professionals,” and the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (Cnil) must be consulted.
The Unresolved Question of Lethal Substances
A major question remains outstanding: which lethal product will be used? In early February, the government tasked the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) with defining the substances that may be used to carry out assisted dying. In countries that practise it, the procedure generally involves an injection of several products.
The HAS plans to deliver its recommendations on the protocol to be followed “before the end of 2026 so that this new right can be effective quickly,” as it stated in a recent note seen by AFP. The law provides that a government order will set the transfer price of the lethal substances as well as the remuneration of the professionals responsible for preparing them.
On this point, “the legislator chose to be optimistic,” notes Martine Lombard, professor emerita of public law at Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, writing on Le Club des juristes. The law sets a deadline of “three months from the promulgation of the law,” meaning mid-November — provided the executive actually meets the timetable.
