Cdm challenges Tuscany region's end-of-life law

The government, during the Council of Ministers this afternoon at Palazzo Chigi, has decided to challenge the Tuscany Region law on end-of-life . This was learned at the end of the Council of Ministers meeting.

Tuscany was the first region to approve a law on the end of life last February 11. Six years after the ruling of the Constitutional Court, which has excluded the punishability of the doctor who facilitates assisted suicide, an administration has a text that unties the organizational and economic knots.

The law had been approved with the votes of the Democratic Party, apart from a representative of the Catholic wing of the party, Italia Viva and the Five Stars. It all started with the proposal of a popular initiative presented by the Coscioni association.

The first comments on the Council of Ministers' decision arrived shortly after. The president of the Tuscany region Eugenio Giani stated: "It is paradoxical that, instead of working on a national law that has been awaited for years, the government chooses to hinder those who have committed to implementing what was established by the "constitutional" Court, which indicated the need to fill a legislative gap in the matter of medically assisted suicide". And he added: "We will defend our law with determination, certain that we have acted in compliance with the law, the Constitution and, above all, people".

The president of the regional council of Tuscany, Antonio Mazzeo , comments: "The government's decision to challenge the Tuscan law on end-of-life is simply absurd: an insult to the sick who ask for help and suffer and - at the same time - a slash against a Region that legislates well, in compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, a trailblazer throughout Italy, but which is blocked at a national level. It happened with the law on short-term rentals and tourism, with the one on seaside resorts and now it is happening with the law on end-of-life".

Mazzeo continues: "The grotesque aspect (which, however, the citizens pay for) is that the government not only stops a Region that is reforming, but does nothing to fill regulatory gaps that have been waiting for years. I really wonder why they don't let us work in peace on issues close to the people and on which, for years, answers from politics have been awaited".

+Europa secretary Riccardo Magi was harsh: "They are false, false in everything, even in what they preach. The government has challenged the Tuscan law on the end of life, in the face of Salvini 's autonomy, who, faced with a choice made by a Regional Council that has the right and duty to regulate the methods of providing health services, lowers the autonomist flag and takes that region to court. The League turns its back on its history and sides with the bigoted centralism of the State".

The parliamentarians of the 5 Star Movement of the Social Affairs Committees of the Chamber and Senate write: "The decision of this medieval government to challenge the law of the Tuscany region on the end of life is very serious and unacceptable, it represents a slap in the face to those who suffer and to the requests of the Constitutional Court. Not only do Meloni and her supporters refuse to work on a national law, but they are putting spokes in the wheels of the few virtuous regions that are equipping themselves with civilized laws. Those same regions used for the shameful buck-passing that the government clings to every time it has to cover up its own failures, as in the case of waiting lists. Our country needs a law on the end of life, the 5 Star Movement has filed two proposals, one in the Chamber and one in the Senate, let's start immediately with those to provide answers to those who suffer and do not have the possibility of leading a dignified life".

According to Angelo Bonelli , member of parliament for Avs and co-spokesperson for Europa Verde, "the government, by challenging the law on the end of life of the Tuscany region, has committed an act of ideological ferocity against families and terminally ill patients, condemned to pain and therapeutic obstinacy by the culpable inertia of the executive which, despite the rulings of the Constitutional Court, does not legislate on the end of life."