Austria: the dignity of the dying ” “

The Parliament in Vienna will debate next month (presumably on 11 February) a bill presented in December that makes provision for a period of leave from work, varying from 3 to 6 months, to allow someone to assist members of his/her own family who are ill, elderly or in a terminal phase. The Minister for the Economy Martin Bartestein described the bill as “Austria’s response to the law on euthanasia in the Netherlands” and added: “Just as parents accompany their children in entering life, so children should accompany their own parents or close relatives at the end of their life”. The Austrian bill. According to its provisions, in future workers would have the right to a reduction of their own hours of work to zero to be able to accompany a family member in the terminal phase of his/her life. Those eligible to benefit from this law include those who assist their own spouse but also close relatives, aunts and uncles, grandchildren and adopted children. Leave from work may also be requested for more than one person. The workers who perform this type of assistance will be protected against dismissal and their health-care and old-age pension contributions will be financed by the state unemployment fund. Those who enjoy part-time leave, by a proportionate reduction of their hours of work, will receive compensation equivalent to the reduction of their salary. Even the unemployed will have a right to this type of leave. The new law ought to enter into force, according to the government, by 1st July. Reactions. Satisfaction about the bill has been expressed by Cardinal Franz König, archbishop emeritus of Vienna, who considers it “an example for Europe, about which we are very satisfied”. It also “testifies to the fact that in our democracy the common good is shared by all the parties represented in Parliament”. Positive reactions have also been expressed by the Hospiz-Oesterreich association, which, ever since 1987, has been offering an interdisciplinary qualification to relatives of the sick in the form of basic courses, such as those in palliative medicine. The president of the association, Sister Hildegard Teuschl, called the bill “a first important step which must be followed up by others”. The refusal to provide active assistance to induce the death of terminally ill patients and support for a plan for hospices at the national level are, in her view, “a significant political and social criterion of quality for a life lived with dignity right to the end”. Caritas too has expressed its support for the bill, but, according to Franz Küberl, director of Austrian Caritas at the national level, and Michael Landau, head of its Vienna section, it must be followed up by suitable measures to develop the provisions of the bill. Austria is now playing in Europe, they say, “a vanguard role for a culture of life, to which belongs, as an indivisible element, a culture of death” and “Austrian society cannot but benefit from this”. On the other hand, point out the two Caritas exponents, if the bill “has created the basic conditions to enable life to be lived with dignity right to the moment of death”, we must now “strive to ensure that everyone may be enabled to accompany his/her own family members in these last stages of life”. Therefore, they stress, “the financial burden of such a choice cannot be supported by the family alone. Optimal conditions need to be created for the process of separation from life, both for those who are dying and for those who are accompanying them.” In speaking of this type of leave from work, a suitable type of language would also need to be adopted, emphasize Küberl and Landau: “We ought not to speak of leave for assistance, but rather of ‘accompaniment’. Still better would be to recur to the concept of ‘hospitality leave’, whether the accompaniment in question takes place at home or in a hospice”. Patrizia Collesi