| Welcome to the weekend issue of Brussels Edition, Bloomberg's daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union. Join us on Saturdays for deeper dives from our bureaus across Europe. ZURICH — For decades, Switzerland has been a place where people could find relatively uncomplicated ways to end their own lives without putting helpers at risk of prosecution, thanks to legal gaps and liberal jurisprudence. Those rules, however, are under pressure now. A new tool called Sarco is pushing the boundaries. Sarco is a plastic capsule that people can sit in to gas themselves with nitrogen by pushing a button. Ultimately, they can even be buried in it. Some politicians have worried that it could spur a wave of "suicide tourism" to Switzerland.  A Sarco suicide capsule. Photographer: Arnd Wiegmann/Getty Images Matters came to a head on the same day last month. A 64-year-old American woman entered a violet plastic sphere resembling a space ship in the forests of Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Some 120 kilometers away, in the Swiss capital Bern, Nina Fehr Düsel, a right-wing parliamentarian quizzed government officials on the legality of the use of that very tool. "The capsule does not meet the requirements of product-safety legislation and the use of nitrogen does not comply with the law on chemicals," Swiss health minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider said. Her answer lasted more than one and half minutes — 20 seconds less than it took for the American woman in the capsule to lose consciousness after she pressed a button activating the dissemination of nitrogen. She died that afternoon, after becoming the first person to use the Sarco pod. Several people were immediately arrested by Swiss police, including a photographer for Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. Another witness, Florian Willet, a euthanasia advocate who runs a Swiss-based group called The Last Resort that advocates for Sarco use in Switzerland, is still in custody. He's being investigated for self-serving motives in inciting the suicide. The Last Resort, along with the non-proft group Exit International, which also supports self-assisted suicide, said in a joint statement that the timing was coincidental and they "maintain that no laws were broken and that the first use of the Sarco was lawful." Earlier this month, at the request of the Swiss government, police in the Netherlands raided Sarco inventor Philip Nitschke's Dutch home, according to Volkskrant, raising broader questions about the future of self-determined death in Europe.  Philip Nitschke Photographer: Arnd Wiegmann/Getty Images In Switzerland, proven self-interest in inciting and assisting suicide constitutes a crime. For years, it was understood that non-self-interested assistance was therefore legal. That legal gap enabled organizations like Dignitas and Exit (which is separate from Exit International) to offer help to people on ending their lives for over 40 years by cooperating with medical practitioners prescribing deadly drugs. After the recent use of Sarco, Fehr Düsel made an official request for the government to examine legal ways to ban the capsule in Switzerland. While she pointed out that a ruling in the chemicals or product-safety law could "stop the foreign organization from exploiting Switzerland's image for their own purposes," the incident should lead to broader discussions about legislation to specifically address suicide assistance in Switzerland. It's not clear yet how the government might react to the request, but new laws could end up limiting current practices "Any special law would be a restriction compared to today as it would regulate many details that are not needed," Marion Schafroth, the head of Exit Switzerland, told Tagesanzeiger. "There is no need for more options in Switzerland," she told the newspaper, insisting that the debate over Sarco should take place in countries where self-assisted suicide is clearly illegal. — Paula Doenecke, Zurich reporter If you or someone you know needs help with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, a global list of helplines is available at OpenCounseling.com. | 
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