End of life. “I am worried,” says a member of the Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life.

Jean Bouhours from Bugu speaks of "a form of betrayal" by Emmanuel Macron regarding the calendar and would have liked the texts on palliative care and active assistance in dying to be one and the same.

"I'm worried, but I'm trying to follow the debates calmly," Jean Bouhours sighs. The Buguois was the only Périgord resident to be part of the Citizens' Convention on the End of Life, an assembly of randomly selected citizens formed in December 2022 at the initiative of the President of the Republic. Since the work was handed over in spring 2023, the retiree has despaired of seeing its guidelines come to fruition .

"Yes, there is frustration," Jean Bouhours simply comments. On April 3, 2023, Emmanuel Macron had pledged "to draft a bill by the end of the summer"; it ultimately took until spring 2024 for the text to finally be placed on the agenda of the National Assembly. But that was without taking into account the dissolution. "For many members of the Convention, this was experienced as a form of betrayal," says the Buguois, a former French teacher.

And, like the swallow, the discussion on end-of-life returned in the spring. New assembly, new balances, new method. While in 2024, parliamentarians had begun debating a single text, integrating palliative care and active assistance in dying (AAM), the dissolution reshuffled the cards. The new Prime Minister, François Bayrou, decided to split the vote on end-of-life into two parts with a single discussion. "This shows that the weight of beliefs and faith weighs more heavily," Jean Bouhours fumed. He added: "76% of members of the Convention were in favor of active assistance in dying."

The retiree deplores "hackneyed arguments." "There could have been a problem with timing in the first version, which retained notions of 'short or medium term.' The current bill [it was tabled by centrist MP Olivier Falorni] evokes 'an advanced or terminal phase' to escape this pitfall. It is a reasonable text," insists Jean Bouhours. While, for the member of the National Assembly, the adoption of the text on palliative care "will achieve consensus," he expresses "real fears" for active assistance in dying, which could be severely mishandled during parliamentary shuttles to the Senate.

Like 5 million viewers on Tuesday, May 13, Jean Bouhours heard the President of the Republic state on TF1 that "in the event of a deadlock, a kind of impossibility of going all the way," the path of a referendum could be considered to "unblock" the situation. The former member of the National Assembly is dragging his feet. He mentions indiscriminately the constraints of Article 11 of the Constitution, the difficulties of fitting "three pages into four words," and even the circumvention of parliamentary representation.

This also fuels a "feeling of frustration" among the 184 members of the Citizens' Convention, who have been working on the end-of-life issue in a "non-partisan" manner for months. Jean Bouhours makes no secret of his opinion: "I hope that both texts will be adopted and that the debate on this divisive subject will take place in a calm atmosphere."