Portugal’s Constitutional Court has rejected, for the second time, a law facilitating euthanasia, pointing to an “intolerable vagueness” in its wording and sending the text back to parliament.

The Court concluded that the text was not in line with the Basic Law because it failed to clearly define the “suffering of great intensity” that could lead to “medically assisted death,” its judges announced in a statement read out to the press.

The Portuguese parliament has been trying to legislate in favour of euthanasia for almost three years.

The Constitutional Court had already rejected this law in March 2021, judging at the time that it used terms that were too imprecise.

Parliament will now be able to redraft the text and resubmit it for promulgation by the President of the Republic, conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had referred the matter to the Constitutional Court in early January.