Belgium’s euthanasia laws should cover elderly people who are “tired of life” or who feel they are a burden on the public purse, a health insurance chief has urged.
Luc Van Gorp, 57, the president of the CM health fund, a Christian mutual insurance provider, said that the number of Belgians over 80 would double to 1.2 million by 2050.
“Many elderly people are tired of life. Why would you necessarily want to prolong such a life? Those people don’t want that themselves, and when it comes to budgets: it only costs the government money,” he told the Nieuwsblad newspaper. “We must remove the stigma.”
Belgium already has “liberal” legislation on euthanasia, which is usually administered by lethal injection. Patients need to claim “unbearable suffering”, including mental illness, to qualify.
Van Gorp called for debate “high on the political agenda” to extend medical killing to prevent a crisis in social care.
Advertisement
“As a society, we will have to consider how we should organise care in the future, knowing that there is already a shortage,” he said.
“How are we going to prepare for this? Not by building residential care centres en masse if they will not contribute to the quality of life.”
There have been calls in both Belgium and the Netherlands for euthanasia to be extended on grounds of “completed life” but linking the question to the provision of social care has led to outrage.
“This really makes me angry,” said Sammy Mahdi, 35, the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, criticising the rise of the “throwaway society”.
“So many elderly people say they feel like a ‘burden’ because they do not fit into the neoliberal model. The answer to that is not euthanasia for those who are tired of life. The answer is respect for our grandparents. The answer is giving families more time for their parents and grandparents.”
Advertisement
Last year’s figures showed an increase of the number of euthanasia deaths of more than 15 per cent to 3,423 deaths, with 48 medically administered deaths on psychiatric grounds, up from 26 in 2022.
In 2023 there were 713 cases, 21 per cent, of euthanasia where the person was not expected to die in the foreseeable future, an increase of 39 per cent.
Reported euthanasia accounted for one in 33 of all deaths in Belgium, a figure that is 15 times higher than that recorded in 2003, the first year that “mercy killings” were legal.
