End of life, the government appeals to the TAR against Emilia-Romagna

On 12 April, the presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Health filed an appeal with the Regional Administrative Court of Emilia-Romagna against the Region, and in particular against the Health Directorate for Personal Health, to request the annulment of the Council resolutions implementing medically assisted suicide in Emilia-Romagna. This was announced by Valentina Castaldini, regional councillor of Forza Italia. The reasons, she explains, highlight 'the body's lack of power' on the issue 'and the contradictory and illogical nature of the motivations introduced in the guidelines sent to the health authorities'.

With the one filed by the Ministry of Health and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the appeals to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) against the end-of-life resolutions in Emilia-Romagna are two. Forza Italia regional councillor Valentina Castaldini had filed a similar appeal in March, together with a group of associations. "I am very happy that the government, with this formal act, confirms and reinforces the work of these months,' says Castaldini, 'the executive has considered that the path of the appeal I opened was the correct one and that there were all the grounds to annul the resolutions, as I have always maintained. In February, Stefano Bonaccini's regional council had approved two resolutions on access to medically assisted suicide, with the aim, the Region explained, of filling the gap in the matter left by Parliament and putting the health authorities in a position to guarantee the right of the sick as sanctioned by the Constitutional Court ruling (no. 242/2019). The health authorities were sent guidelines establishing the procedure and timing of the end of life, a maximum of 42 days from the patient's request to the possible execution of a pharmacological procedure. Among the contested elements was also the establishment of Corec, the Regional Committee for Ethics in the Clinic, which is called upon to express an opinion - albeit non-binding - on patients' requests.

"The line has been crossed. Not only are people's rights recognised by the Constitutional Court being denied, but a political battle is being waged on the skin of patients in dramatic conditions. Emilia-Romagna will defend its own acts and above all the right of a patient at the end of life to decide for himself, without having to ask permission from the government and the right wing'. This is how Stefano Bonaccini commented on Facebook on the government's appeal to the Tar against the regional end-of-life resolutions. 'Through the regional councillor Castaldini,' Bonaccini wrote on Facebook, 'the government has made it known that it has appealed to the Tar against the resolution with which in Emilia-Romagna we apply the Constitutional Court ruling on the end of life, in the face of the now chronic absence of a national law. So the government, instead of worrying about giving a law to the country and to people living in dramatic conditions, even chooses to boycott Emilia-Romagna implementing the Constitutional Court ruling. For the right-wing it is not enough to deny a right to people sanctioned by the Court: for them it is preferable that a patient in an end-of-life condition should have to go to court to have what the Constitutional Court has finally sanctioned recognised'.