Symbol of an exponential trend in the Netherlands, the former Dutch Catholic prime minister, Dries van Agt, and his wife, Eugénie, resorted to euthanasia “as a duo” on Monday February 5, and both died at the age of 93. The Rights Forum, the research center on Israel and the Palestinians that he founded, announced the news on Friday, specifying that the former elected official of the Christian Democratic CDA party had left “hand in hand with his wife”, in Nijmegen.
The director of the Rights Forum, Gerard Jonkman, interviewed by the Dutch television channel NOS, indicated that the two spouses were very ill but “could not live without each other” after 70 years of living together. Dries van Agt suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2019 and suffered serious after-effects. Prime minister between 1977 and 1982, and first leader of his political party, he was ambassador of the European Union to Japan and the United States in the 1980s.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legal in the Netherlands since 2002. But it was only in a count of all procedures in 2020 that the first “couple euthanasias” were counted, with 26 people. Since then, their number has increased each year: 32 the following year, 58 in 2022.
