And then there were four. The Veneto Regional Council yesterday approved the citizens' initiative bill on procedures for accessing medically assisted suicide — submitted to every Italian region by the Associazione Luca Coscioni — with 32 votes in favour, 14 against and 5 abstentions. The bill's rapporteur was Manuela Lanzarin, chair of the Health Committee and, notably, a member of Lega: this is the first time that a measure of this kind, drawn from the "Liberi Subito" proposal — rejected in the previous legislature in January 2024 and subsequently rewritten to comply with the Constitutional Court's guidance — has been passed by a conservative-leaning administration.

Before Veneto, the only other Italian regions to have enacted legislation of this kind were Toscana, Sardegna and Emilia-Romagna. Luca Zaia, president of the Veneto Regional Council and the region's long-serving governor, described the vote as "an act of responsibility" reached after more than ten hours of debate, stressing that the law does not introduce a new right but simply organises, within the scope of regional competencies, the procedures already outlined by constitutional case law.

Beyond Veneto: the situation in other regions

Across the rest of the country, the picture remains fragmented. Two further regions — the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano, and Umbria — are currently debating similar proposals, while eight others have already submitted or are about to submit a draft text (among them Lombardia, Puglia, Sicilia and Piemonte). In Lazio and Calabria signature-gathering campaigns are under way, while Abruzzo, Basilicata, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Valle d'Aosta have yet to begin any formal process. This patchwork of regional initiatives, according to the Associazione Luca Coscioni, is filling a gap left by a Parliament that, since 2019 — the year of the Constitutional Court's ruling on the Cappato case — has still not passed a comprehensive national end-of-life law, leaving individual regions to make up for the regulatory vacuum.

"We are grateful to the 9,000 citizens who signed the citizens' initiative proposal, and to the regional councillors of Veneto who approved our law — designed to prevent people suffering from unbearable and irreversible conditions from remaining hostage to genuine bureaucratic ordeals and having to wait months or years for an answer," explained Marco Cappato and Filomena Gallo, respectively treasurer and national secretary of the Associazione Luca Coscioni.

Opposing reactions were not long in coming. Pro Vita & Famiglia denounced the vote as "an attack on life" and a "betrayal" by the centre-right councillors who voted in favour, calling on the Government to challenge the law in court — the same Government that, it should be noted, has so far failed to challenge the equivalent laws passed by Toscana and Sardegna before they came into effect. More measured, though similarly critical, remarks came from the Patriarch of Venice, Francesco Moraglia, who spoke of "bitterness" and of a healthcare model whose trajectory was "difficult to control" — the slippery-slope argument that has reliably accompanied every regional law approved on this issue so far.