A recent roundtable discussion, titled "Dying Today and Tomorrow" ("Stierwen haut a mue"), highlighted significant gaps in Luxembourg’s approach to euthanasia and palliative care.
Seventeen years after the country’s euthanasia law came into force, a number of key questions remain unanswered. In practice, legal grey areas unnecessarily complicate end-of-life situations for both patients and doctors.
According to both the national Euthanasia Control Commission and the non-profit Mäi Wëllen, Mäi Wee, political reluctance continues to block any meaningful revision or modernisation of the law, despite the fact that only limited changes would be required.
Jean-Jacques Schonckert and François Prum, both active within the association, argue that children and adolescents should also have the right to request euthanasia.
For now, however, political discussion appears to be heading in the opposite direction, they note.
Critics also point out that the current law lacks clarity, and that people are being denied the right to determine the circumstances of their own death, a situation described as "unacceptable" by psychiatrist Marc Graas.
He warns that people are effectively being patronised by the state, unable to set out clear wishes for the end of their life, for example in cases of future dementia.
Palliative care provision in Luxembourg was also found to be lacking. Ben Thill, a specialist in the field, points out that the country has just one hospice, namely Haus Omega, which he says is wholly insufficient.
By contrast, Saarland, with only slightly more residents, has 15 hospices, 10 palliative care wards, and 10 mobile teams.
Thill calls Luxembourg a "developing country" in the area of palliative medicine, and adds that many doctors working in the field lack suitable expertise.
Nurse Cilly Soragna, who has experience in both palliative care and euthanasia, believes that both options must be available to patients, according to their own wishes. Everyone suffering at the end of life, she says, should receive personalised support with all their decisions.
All participants in the roundtable agreed that, after 17 years, Luxembourg’s euthanasia law needs to be reviewed, and that society is overdue for a broad and open debate on the matter.
