At the end of a long-lasting legislative journey, France joins the restricted list of countries having adopted laws authorizing assisted dying. Approved by the Constitutional Council, France’s highest jurisdiction, the law was officially enacted on the 18th of August 2026 and is expected to take effect in 2027. Although the law represents a breakthrough for France, the framework on bioethical issues it implements still seems narrower than the more permissive assisted-dying systems of European countries such as Belgium or the Netherlands.

The law conditions the access to assisted suicide with definitive criteria, making it more of last resort medical solution than a universal right. Accessing l’aide à mourir (“help to die “) requires the applicant to be at least eighteen years old and hold French nationality or reside in France on a stable and regular basis. The patient additionally needs to physically suffer from a life-threatening, terminal illness. Access to assisted dying also requires the free, informed and repeated consent of the patient.

These criteria exclude conditions defined only by psychological suffering, a distinction that sets the French model apart from the more lenient Dutch and Belgian frameworks, where psychological suffering can, under some circumstances, qualify.

But why such a restrictive text, compared to the 105 proposals issued by the Citizen’s convention on end-of-life care which President Emmanuel Macron initiated in October 2022? The answer lies partly in the bill’s long and complex adoption process. The original text was delayed by the dissolution of the National Assembly, France’s lower chamber of Parliament, in June 2024, and reintroduced as two separate bills in 2025. The first, reinforcing access to palliative care, was adopted in May 2026 with far less turmoil as the second text. Creating the actual right to aid in dying, this bill underwent a fiercer political battle in Parliament: Approved three times by the National Assembly and rejected three times by the more conservative-leaning Senate, the parliamentary shuttle ended only when the lower chamber was given the deciding vote by the government on 15 July 2026.

That long-lasting adoption process allowed for a massive opposition to form and influence the lawmaking process, forcing the bill’s sponsors to make compromises. Critics gathered around the belief that assisted-dying threatens human dignity and risks framing severely ill people as burdens instead of patients in need of care. The Société Française d'Accompagnement et de Soins Palliatifs (French Society for Support and Palliative Care, SFAP) notably criticized the government for its lack of investment in palliative care, often flagged as underfunded and unevenly distributed on the French territory, a situation the SFAP argues shouldn’t result in making death the easier option to offer.