The proportion of deaths in Belgium caused by euthanasia has more than doubled over a five-year period, reaching 4% of all deaths in 2025, according to a report from the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia released earlier this month.
According to a report released every two years as required under Belgian euthanasia law, there were 2,445 euthanasia deaths in 2020, accounting for 1.9% of all deaths in the region. However, the proportion of deaths in Belgium caused by euthanasia more than doubled by 2025, resulting in 4,487 deaths by euthanasia, accounting for 4% of all deaths in Belgium.
The report, which covers the two years of 2024 and 2025, also revealed there was a 12.43% increase in deaths by euthanasia from 2024, when 3,991 people ended their lives by euthanasia. Since 2003, the first full year in which euthanasia was legal in Belgium, when 235 people ended their lives by euthanasia, there has been a 1,809.36% increase in the number of people ending their lives this way.
Since euthanasia was made legal in Belgium in 2002, over 42,000 people have ended their lives this way.