The Assembly of the Republic approved this Thursday the five bills submitted by the PS, BE, PAN, PEV and Liberal Initiative that provide for the decriminalization of medically assisted death (better known as euthanasia). The PS bill was the one with the most votes in favor (127), 86 against and 10 abstentions.
The BE bill got 124 favorable votes, 85 against and 14 abstentions; PAN 121 in favor, 86 against and 16 abstentions; the ENP had 114 votes in favor, 86 against and 23 abstentions; and the Liberal Initiative had 114 votes in favor, 85 against and 24 abstentions.
The voting of the five bills was made by individual vote. Of the 230 deputies, eight deputies were absent: six from the PSD and two from the PS.
The bills now go down to the committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, so that the parties, after negotiations, arrive at a “common text”, which should not be too difficult considering that the bills are quite similar. The intention of the PS is for the new law to be approved, in a global final vote in general, before the summer.
The approval of the final text in general can, however, be pushed for later, if the popular initiative to endorse euthanasia, which has the support of the Catholic Church, CDS-PP and Chega, manages to gather the 60 thousand signatures necessary to enter the Assembly of the Republic to be discussed (and not voted). The President of the Assembly of the Republic, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, must ask the competent committee for an opinion on the initiative and decide on its admission.
Once accepted, the proposal returns to the competent committee, which will have to hear the representative of the group of citizens responsible for the proposal and prepare the draft resolution with the text of the initiative. Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues must then schedule the discussion and vote on the proposal “for one of the next ten plenary sessions”.
If approved, the diploma goes to Belém and, in the following eight days, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa must submit the referendum proposal to the Constitutional Court, “for the purposes of preventive inspection of constitutionality and legality, including the assessment of the requirements related to the respective electoral universe ”. If no irregularities are pointed out, the President of the Republic may call the referendum, and the final decision to call the referendum is entirely up to him.
If the popular initiative that calls for the referendum does not get the 60,000 signatures necessary until the final global vote on the “common text” on euthanasia, the diploma goes faster to the Palace of Belém. The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, then you have three options: to enact, veto or request preventive inspection of the document.
If it promulgates (which is very unlikely), the diploma will be published in the Diário da República. If the President of the Republic vetoes, the document returns to the Assembly of the Republic and, if there is a two-thirds majority of the deputies to confirm a possible diploma, “the President of the Republic must promulgate the diploma within eight days of receiving it ”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa can also send the document to the Constitutional Court, being certain that there are differences between the judges of the laws regarding the interpretation of the law.
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