In a statement to Rádio Renascença in the week in which parliament votes on projects to legalise medically assisted death, Cavaco Silva also criticises the management of priorities by the Assembly of the Republic.

"In a country like Portugal, with one of the worst risks of poverty and social exclusion in the European Union and without a network of palliative care that patients from disadvantaged families can access, in a Portugal where impoverishment is accentuated in relation to other countries, the priority of the deputies is the legalisation of the practice of euthanasia, authorising a doctor to kill another person", he says.

In the week in which parliament votes on the replacement text that legalises medically assisted death, the former President of the Republic says he has no doubt about the unconstitutionality of the euthanasia law: "The legalisation of euthanasia does not respect the spirit of the Constitution".

After voting on the specialty, and after the final global vote in plenary, the law goes to Belém, for evaluation by the President of the Republic. In the last legislature, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa vetoed the diploma twice, one of them for unconstitutionality.

Cavaco Silva warns that "authorising a doctor to kill another person by law is an extremely dangerous leap into the unknown", stating: "in some European countries there have been reports of pressure on the elderly and sick to accept being killed".

Voting on the diploma in the specialty will take place on Wednesday at the Commission on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, after being postponed during the month of October.