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Health, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan

End of life: Against the assisted dying bill, « nouvel eugénisme » [“new eugenics”] (May 2025)

Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.

The lever. Rights of patients at the end of life: assisted dying created by the act of 18 August 2026 (eligibility conditions, maintenance, extension or repeal), palliative care, advance directives. Direction rule: ↑ assisted dying more widely permitted.

« C'est une loi qui instaure un nouvel eugénisme. J'ai honte. […] Mais le rôle d'une société, le rôle de la médecine, est d'alléger les souffrances et pas de tuer. »1

Translation by the editorsIt is a law that establishes a new eugenics. I am ashamed. […] But the role of a society, the role of medicine, is to relieve suffering and not to kill.

Words of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Sud Radio, L'invité politique, 30 May 2025. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The cited source does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

lever that cannot be costed

Lever with no coefficient in the cost schedule: the position is compared, not costed.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Act no. 2026-794 of 18 August 2026 on the right to assistance in dying (finally adopted by the National Assembly on 15 July 2026, after three rejections by the Senate; declared constitutional with reservations by the Constitutional Council, decision no. 2026-910 DC of 14 August 2026; JO of 19 August 2026). It allows an adult, French or residing stably and lawfully in France, suffering from a serious and incurable condition that threatens life, at an advanced or terminal stage, with refractory or unbearable suffering, and able to express a free and informed wish, to use a lethal substance that they self-administer (or, if they cannot, administered by a doctor or a nurse). Its implementation depends on implementing decrees (procedure, review committee), which are awaited. Act no. 2026-404 of 26 May 2026 aiming to guarantee equal access for all to palliative care and support. The Claeys-Leonetti act of 2016 (continuous deep sedation until death, advance directives) remains in force.

Horizon. Not applicable.

Limits. Ethical question, with no direct static budgetary cost: cannot be costed. Only the resources for palliative care (ten-year strategy, law of 26 May 2026) could be, but no official amount has been checked here. Direction of positions: relative to the law of 18 August 2026, supporting the law as voted is status quo, repealing or restricting it a decrease, extending it (minors, advance directives, psychological suffering) an increase; a position predating the vote that calls for « légaliser » [“legalising”] assisted dying remains dated to its day. Implementing decrees: the press says they are expected (Caducée, 25 August 2026); a search on 13 October 2026 found none published, without exhaustive consultation of the Journal officiel.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

  1. Sud Radio, L'invité politique, 30 May 2025. Words of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (Sud Radio, L'invité politique).

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