The Netherlands has recorded its first reported case of euthanasia involving a child aged between one and twelve, according to the government's annual review of life-ending procedures — the first such case since the rules were extended to that age group in 2024.
What was reported
The case, which occurred in late 2025, was disclosed by the Dutch health minister in a letter to parliament accompanying the annual report of the official review committees. No identifying details about the child — age, condition or sex — have been made public, and none are expected to be. As is routine under Dutch law, the case is being reviewed by the prosecution service.
The legal framework
The Netherlands became the first country to legalize euthanasia under a comprehensive law, in 2002, for adults and for minors aged 12 and over who meet strict conditions, with parental involvement for younger teenagers. Separately, since the mid-2000s the so-called Groningen Protocol has set criteria for ending the lives of newborns under one year with severe, untreatable suffering. That left a gap for children between one and twelve, which the government closed through a regulation that took effect in 2024 — making the Netherlands, with Belgium, one of the few countries to permit the practice across childhood age groups.
Strict criteria
The 2024 regulation sets a high bar. A child must have a serious, incurable condition causing suffering judged unbearable and with no prospect of improvement, after palliative options have been exhausted. Both parents or guardians must consent, the child's own wishes are considered where their development allows, an independent physician must assess the case, and a specialist committee reviews it afterward before the prosecution service makes its own determination, the review committees explain. When the rule was introduced, officials estimated it would apply to only a handful of children a year.
A contested ethical question
The subject divides clinicians, ethicists and the public. Supporters argue the change responds to rare but real situations in which children face relentless suffering that medicine cannot relieve; writing when the expansion was announced, Oxford ethicist Dominic Wilkinson described cases of children with untreatable conditions enduring suffering that palliative care could not ease, and framed the core question as what society wants doctors to do in such circumstances, in The Conversation. Critics — including some bioethicists and disability-rights advocates — counter that young children cannot meaningfully consent, worry that suffering may not be reliably distinguished from disability, and caution that expanding eligibility over time risks eroding original limits.
The wider debate
The Netherlands has been central to the global debate on assisted dying for more than two decades. Its supporters point to mandatory reporting and independent oversight as safeguards; critics see the gradual broadening of who qualifies — from terminal physical illness to psychiatric suffering and now young children — as cause for concern. This first case will be among the earliest tests of how the 2024 rule's safeguards work in practice.
