120 overseas patients died by euthanasia in Belgium in 2024
120 overseas patients died by euthanasia in Belgium last year, according to figures from the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia cited in La Libre Belgique. This represents 3 per cent of the 3,991 registered cases in 2024.
Most of those patients, 106, were French patients. The others were six Belgians living abroad, two Germans, two Dutch, one Spaniard, one Hungarian, one Portuguese and one British.
A person’s place of residence has only been mentioned on the euthanasia declaration since March 2024. The law governing euthanasia does not stipulate an obligation to reside in Belgium, but the conditions are the same for both foreign and domestic patients.
Unbearable suffering
A patient may request euthanasia if they are experiencing persistent, unbearable physical or psychological suffering due to a serious and incurable illness caused by an accident or disease. The request must be voluntary, well-considered and repeated.
The vast majority of the overseas patients choosing to die by euthanasia in Belgium are French. The patients, mainly aged between 60 and 79, suffered from neurological conditions, tumours and multiple pathologies. In nearly two-thirds of cases, death was expected in the short term.
Earlier this month, French singer and actor Nicole Croisille, 88, died in a Paris hospital where she had been rushed a few days earlier. After doctors discovered a tumour in her liver, she underwent chemotherapy and tried a number of increasingly aggressive treatments.
"In France, there is no way you can legally end your life under medical supervision"
On the advice of Belgian support body the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (ADMD), she met the end-of-life consultation team at a hospital in Namur to plan her death by euthanasia when these treatments failed. Euthanasia is not permitted in France. However, she died before she could undergo the procedure.
“In France, palliative sedation is the only option. There is no way you can legally end your life there under medical supervision,” Wim Distelmans, professor of palliative medicine at the VUB and chair of the euthanasia commission, told VRT.
“It is being debated, but only in a form where the patient has to take the drug themselves and no doctor is involved.”
Lydie Imhoff, a French woman who chose to undergo euthanasia in Belgium in 2024 and allowed journalists to follow her journey. She had been hemiplegic and blind from birth due to a perinatal stroke © PHOTO SIMON WOHLFAHRT / AFP
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