The most important part of the law is the guarantee that doctors performing active euthanasia or assisting to commit suicide will not be liable to prosecution.
The condition for this is that the patient should be terminally ill and in insufferable pain, and should voluntarily, deliberately and repeatedly confirm in writing their desire to end their own life.
All cases of euthanasia must be reviewed by a monitoring commission, which will contact a prosecutor if they find violations of the law.
[3] A petition against the amendment failed on 11 February 2009 with only 796 rather than the necessary 25,000 signatures,[5] and on 12 March all the 52 Deputies who were present approved the law at second reading.
Thus, the euthanasia law was promulgated with the signatures of the Grand-Duke and Health Minister Mars Di Bartolomeo.