On the fate of Eluana Englaro, the young woman who entered the “end of life” in 2009 after seventeen years spent in a vegetative state, conflicting positions and dramatic and lacerating controversies were discussed before and after her death. The euthanasia law invoked by many has never been passed. Now, fifteen years later, only one person is being presented with the bill for that dramatic affair: Carlo Lucchina, then director of healthcare for the Lombardy region, who will have to pay almost 180 thousand euros out of his own pocket, following a decision by the Court of Auditors. Her fault: not having allowed Eluana’s father, Beppino Englaro, to admit his daughter to a hospital in Lombardy to carry out the sentence which authorized the suspension of the nutrition and hydration that kept her alive.
To carry out the suspension, authorized by the Court of Appeal of Milan, Beppino Englaro had to move his daughter to a clinic in Friuli. Eluana arrived there on February 3, and she died there three days later, just as Parliament was about to vote on a law that would have prevented her death. But Eluana’s legal case did not end there: because her father turned to the Regional Administrative Court of Lombardy asking to be reimbursed for the expenses incurred for the transfer of her daughter to Friuli. In 2016 he was proved right, the following year the Council of State confirmed the decision. The Lombardy Region had to pay. And it is that compensation that Lucchina is now being asked to repay to the Region.
What is striking is the harshness of the tones with which the Court of Auditors reproaches Lucchina for his decision of fifteen years ago: the public manager is attributed with an “authoritative and unilateral conception of the right to health”. Lucchina’s fault: not having obeyed the Court of Appeal, instead reminding Lombard hospitals that in their departments “basic assistance must be guaranteed which takes the form of nutrition, hydration and care of people”. It was a decision that yesterday, after the news of the conviction, Lucchina continues to defend: “It was not a conscientious objection, but the directives also received from the regional attorney’s office were applied.” On the other hand, in the first instance, the Court of Auditors had also considered Lucchina’s choice to be correct, “considered following an investigation with the regional attorney’s office” and compliant with the directive of the Ministry of Health which had excluded an obligation of euthanasia for public hospitals .
To justify Lucchina’s conviction, the Court of Auditors proclaimed “the right to health as also the right to refuse treatment in favor of the concepts of self-determination of the patient and the refusal of degrading and aggressive therapeutic treatments”. But Eluana could not refuse anything because she was not conscious, and the refusal of palliative care was deduced only from opinions expressed by her when she did not imagine the tragic fate that her life reserved for her. Now her father Beppino says: “they could have avoided everything they did, now it’s clear that they made a mistake and they have to answer for it.”
But on the moderate front, Lucchina’s conviction creates dismay: «For the Court it seems necessary to kill disabled people in difficulty to guarantee the healthcare budget. Something that is disgusting”, says Ignazio Zullo, deputy of the Brothers of Italy.
