Why eight EU Member States signed, but not yet ratified the Convention for Human Rights and Biomedicine

The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 19 November 1996 and opened for signature on 4 April 1997. At the moment 21 of the 33 countries that signed the Convention are EU Member States. Signing the Convention implies the obligation to put the Convention before the national Parliament within a reasonable period of time with a view to ratification. Eight of the 21 EU Member States – namely Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland and Sweden – still have to complete the ratification.In this article the reasons why eight Member States have not yet ratified the Convention, but only signed it, are mapped and analyzed. Because of the concrete list of patient rights provided for in the Convention, we focus on the question whether the reasons for not ratifying are related to these patient rights provisions.