Assisted Dying in Europe: The Law and the Numbers

Last Updated: July 2026

Overview

Europe contains both the world’s most permissive assisted dying regimes and countries where helping someone die carries a long prison sentence, often within a few hundred kilometres of each other. The Netherlands recorded 10,341 euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths in 2025, about 6% of all deaths in the country, while assisting a death in most of central and eastern Europe remains a criminal offence with no exception.

The map changed again in July 2026, when France’s National Assembly gave final approval to a law permitting lethal medication for adults with incurable advanced illness. The British Parliament, meanwhile, ran out of time on its own bill three months earlier. This page describes the landscape and does not take a side. It is a maintained reference, revised as laws and circumstances change.

Terminology matters here and is contested. This page uses “euthanasia” for a doctor administering the substance, “assisted suicide” for the person taking it themselves, and “assisted dying” as the umbrella term. Campaigners on both sides object to at least one of those choices.

The Competing Frames

Autonomy. The argument that a competent adult’s decision about the manner and timing of their own death is theirs to make, and that the state’s role ends at ensuring the decision is genuine. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court took the strongest version of this position in 2020, finding a right to self-determined death that includes the right to seek help. Critics note that autonomy arguments do not by themselves explain why access is usually limited to the ill, since the logic would extend further.

Sanctity of life. The position that intentionally ending a life is categorically different from allowing death, and that the distinction should hold regardless of consent. This has religious grounding in Catholic and Orthodox teaching, which shapes politics in Poland, Italy, Ireland, and Greece, and a secular version arguing that a legal system which authorises killing changes something about the society that does it. Its weakness in public debate is that it often cannot accommodate cases of prolonged untreatable suffering.

Suffering and medical duty. Doctors and palliative specialists appear on both sides of this one. Some argue that where symptom control fails, refusing assistance is itself a form of harm. Others, including several national medical associations, argue that adequate palliative care makes assisted dying largely unnecessary and that the demand reflects gaps in care provision rather than a fixed need. The empirical question of how much unrelieved suffering remains after good palliative care is genuinely unsettled.

Protection of the vulnerable. This frame is distinct from religious opposition and often comes from disability rights organisations and geriatricians rather than churches. The concern is not principle but pressure: that people who are old, disabled, isolated, or expensive to care for will experience an implied expectation. Supporters of legalisation point to safeguards and to reporting data showing most cases involve cancer and other advanced physical illness. Opponents respond that subtle pressure is precisely what reporting systems cannot detect.

Professional integrity. Medical bodies in several countries argue that participation changes the doctor-patient relationship and the profession’s self-understanding. Every European law includes conscientious objection provisions, which concedes part of the point. In Switzerland the issue is sidestepped entirely, since assistance there is not a medical act.

The Legal Spectrum

European law falls into five broad categories, and the differences between them matter more than the shared label.

Prohibition. The majority position. Most of central Europe, eastern Europe, the Balkans, Ireland, and Greece prohibit both euthanasia and assisted suicide, with criminal penalties. The European Parliament’s research service notes there is no EU competence over the question, which is why the map is so uneven.

Non-medical assisted suicide. Switzerland is the outlier. Its penal code criminalises assistance only where the motive is selfish, a provision dating to 1942, and it requires no medical diagnosis, no terminal condition, and no residency. That last point is why Swiss organisations receive foreign requests and why the practice is sometimes called death tourism by its critics.

Court-created access without a statute. Germany’s constitutional court struck down the ban on organised assistance in 2020, and the Bundestag rejected both replacement bills in 2023, leaving a right with no regulatory framework. Italy’s Constitutional Court has recognised a narrow right where a person depends on life-sustaining treatment, and in 2025 struck down parts of a Tuscan regional law attempting to fill the national vacuum.

Assisted suicide with statutory conditions. Austria legalised assisted suicide in 2022 with a directive procedure, waiting periods, and two medical assessments, while keeping euthanasia illegal.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide. The Netherlands and Belgium since 2002, Luxembourg since 2009, Spain since 2021, and Portugal since 2023. The Dutch and Belgian laws are the broadest, requiring unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement rather than a terminal prognosis, which admits psychiatric conditions and dementia cases the Iberian laws do not.

Law versus practice. Formal legality and real access diverge sharply. Spain’s law permits euthanasia but conscientious objection registries in some regions leave few participating doctors. Germany has a right and no procedure. Belgium and the Netherlands have detailed reporting systems, which is also why their data is the only reliable evidence base anyone has, and why both sides of the international debate cite Dutch figures.

The Regional Map

Benelux. The Dutch total rose 3.8% in 2025 to over 10,000 cases, with 75% of recipients aged over 70 and 85% of cases involving cancer, neurological, lung, or cardiovascular disease. Belgium’s federal commission received 4,486 declarations in 2025, 4% of all Belgian deaths and a 12.4% rise on 2024. Belgium has recorded seven cases involving minors since extending the law in 2014.

France. The National Assembly adopted the final text on 15 July 2026 by 291 votes to 241, overriding a Senate rejection under France’s constitutional procedure. Access is limited to adult citizens and legal residents with an incurable, life-threatening illness in an advanced or terminal phase, and the substance may be self-administered or given by a clinician if the patient cannot. The Senate president and prime minister referred the law to the Constitutional Council, which has up to a month to rule, and the law takes effect only after that.

Iberia. Spain’s 2021 law covers serious incurable illness or a grave chronic condition causing unbearable suffering, with a multi-stage approval process including a regional evaluation commission. Portugal legalised in 2023 after repeated presidential vetoes and constitutional court references, with a narrower terminal-illness threshold.

Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy. These four have arrived at four different arrangements from similar legal traditions. Switzerland permits non-medical assistance with minimal state involvement, Germany has a constitutional right and a legislative vacuum described in detail by the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the life sciences, Austria has a statute for assisted suicide only, and Italy has judicial permission with contested regional implementation.

The United Kingdom and islands. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed the Commons in June 2025 and ran out of parliamentary time in the Lords before prorogation in April 2026. A successor bill was reintroduced in June 2026. Scotland’s parliament rejected its own bill in March 2026. The Isle of Man passed legislation in March 2025 and Jersey in February 2026, both outside the UK Parliament’s direct control.

The Nordics and Ireland. None permit assisted dying, though all have active parliamentary debate and, in Denmark and Finland, government-commissioned reviews. Ireland’s parliamentary committee recommended legalisation in 2024 without producing a law.

Central and eastern Europe. Prohibition is close to uniform, with limited public campaigning. Poland’s debate is shaped by Catholic institutional opposition, and the Orthodox-majority states have seen little legislative movement.

Recent Changes

The Dutch and Belgian laws of 2002 codified practices that had been tolerated for years and set the terms for everything since. For two decades afterwards little moved: Luxembourg in 2009 was the only addition.

The second wave came through courts rather than parliaments. Italy’s Constitutional Court in 2019 and Germany’s in 2020 both found constitutional limits on blanket prohibition, and neither legislature has produced a full statutory answer. Judicial routes create rights faster than they create procedures.

The third wave is legislative and recent. Spain in 2021, Austria in 2022, Portugal in 2023, and France in 2026 all passed laws through parliaments, and Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, and the Isle of Man have all voted on the question since 2024. Roughly a quarter of Europe’s population now lives under some form of legal access, up from close to none in 2000.

Active Debates

France’s constitutional review. The Constitutional Council’s ruling determines whether and when the July 2026 law takes effect, and could strike individual provisions. Implementation decrees and the availability of participating clinicians will decide what access actually looks like. As of mid-2026 neither is settled.

Britain’s procedural question. The reintroduced bill raises whether the Parliament Act, which allows the Commons to override the Lords, could be used on a private member’s bill on a conscience issue. That would be constitutionally unusual and is contested on both sides.

Widening criteria. The Dutch debate over “completed life” requests from older people without serious illness, and Belgian cases involving psychiatric conditions, are the sharpest live arguments in the countries with the longest experience. Both sides of the international debate treat these as evidence, for opposite conclusions.

Germany’s vacuum. Six years after the constitutional ruling there is still no statute. Whether the Bundestag legislates or the courts continue to define the boundaries case by case remains open.

Cross-border access. Swiss availability to non-residents means prohibition elsewhere in Europe is partial for anyone who can afford travel. Whether that is an argument for domestic legalisation or against it is disputed, and it also raises unresolved questions about prosecuting relatives who accompany someone.

This is a maintained reference page, last updated July 2026. It is revised as laws and circumstances change. Major developments are covered as dated posts in the News section and linked from here.

Discussion Questions

What is the law on assisted dying where you live, and when was it last debated?
Is there a meaningful difference between a doctor administering a substance and a patient taking it themselves?
Switzerland requires no diagnosis at all. Does that make its law more honest or less safe?
If autonomy is the reason to allow assisted dying, why do most laws restrict it to people who are ill?
Disability rights groups oppose these laws for reasons unrelated to religion. How would you weigh that objection?
Germany has a constitutional right to assistance and no law setting out how it works. What problems does that create?
Belgium and the Netherlands publish detailed annual data. Does more transparency make you more or less comfortable with their laws?
Imagine you are a doctor in a country that has just legalised assisted dying and you object to participating. What do you owe your patients?
Britain’s bill passed one chamber and died in the other. Should a conscience question be decided differently from ordinary legislation?
Does the availability of assisted dying in one country change what prohibition means in its neighbours?

Assisted Dying in Europe: The Law, the Numbers, and the Argument