According to the Portuguese Constitutional Court (TC), six unconstitutional rules were highlighted in the diploma that promulgates euthanasia. In a statement, the judicial entity states that from the assessment carried out, “almost all [rules] that make up the diploma were not declared unconstitutional.”

Among the rules declared unconstitutional, there is an article that, according to the TC, violates the Constitution, which refers to decisions taken between a doctor and a patient who requests medically assisted death. Therefore, it is unconstitutional for the doctor to agree with the patient on the method to be used to carry out euthanasia, as well as giving the patient permission to choose the procedure to be used for medically assisted death. Furthermore, allowing euthanasia to be applied “in an informed and conscious manner.”

The TC also considered unconstitutional the article that allows medically assisted death to be carried out without an analysis by a specialist doctor, and, consequently, also against the general article “that legalises, under certain conditions, assisted death”.

According to the TC statement, in the article “medically assisted death is considered non-punishable when it occurs by decision of the person himself, an adult, whose will is current and reiterated, serious, free and clear, in a situation of suffering of great intensity, with definitive injury of extreme gravity or serious and incurable illness, when practiced or helped by health professionals”.

For the Court, it is also unconstitutional that the article requires that a health professional who does not want to proceed with the medically assisted death of a patient must justify the motivations that lead to the refusal of the medical act.

The TC judges base the unconstitutionality of the articles on Article 2 of the Portuguese Constitution, which states that “the Portuguese Republic is a democratic state of law, based on popular sovereignty, on the pluralism of democratic expression and political organisation, on respect for and guarantee of the implementation of fundamental rights and freedoms and the separation and interdependence of powers”. The article of the Constitution that states that “human life is inviolable” was also considered.

According to José João Arantes, president of the TC, the euthanasia diploma has not yet been accepted “given the parameter of article 24, 1, of the Constitution considered in isolation.” José João Arantes also says that the exercise of euthanasia must “be controlled with rigour and extreme demand, because it is an irreversible decision taken by people in a situation of great fragility”, reiterating the unconstitutionalities pointed out by the TC in the diploma approved by parliament.

In Parliament

In Portugal, euthanasia has been discussed since 1995, when the National Council of Ethics for Life Sciences debated the subject for the first time.

In 2012, five different proposals were presented regarding the living will, which would give people freedom to decide how they would like to proceed with their health care. It can give the patient the decision to leave in writing whether they wish to continue with certain treatments, in the case of a disabling illness. After the approval of this measure, the debate on medically assisted death began to be more present in the Assembly of the Republic.

In 2015, the “Right to Die with Dignity” movement was born, where a manifesto was presented, and a petition was shared that aimed to decriminalise medically assisted death. Thus, in 2018, the most left-wing parties in the Assembly of the Republic (BE, PS, PAN and PEV) submitted bills to Parliament that were all rejected.

In the following legislature, in 2021, the same parties and the IL presented five different proposals, which were approved but vetoed by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, as he considered that the articles had “insufficient normative density.”

After Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa's veto, the bills were improved, approved on November 5, 2021, and vetoed days later due to contradictions in the concepts of “serious disease only”, “serious and incurable disease”, and “incurable and fatal disease.”

In 2023, the concepts were reformulated, and the possibility of the patient being accompanied by a psychologist during the process was added. Likewise, a period of two months passes between the request for euthanasia and the procedure being carried out.

Now, with the most recent opinion from the TC, the diploma will have to be improved so that the decriminalisation of medically assisted death can be carried out in Portugal. However, due to the proximity of elections, work will only resume in the next legislature.