The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the decision of a court in France to allow a paralysed man to be taken off intravenous food and water, sparking condemnation from Malta’s former chief justice.

In a strong dissenting opinion, Vincent De Gaetano and four other judges who serve on the ECHR said this court had forfeited the title of ‘The Conscience of Europe’ which it had accepted to mark its 50th anniversary in 2010.

Psychiatric nurse Vincent Lambert, 38, who was left severely brain damaged after a 2008 road accident, has split his family and sparked a fierce euthanasia debate in France.

What is the overriding reason justifying the state in not intervening to protect life?

His wife Rachel, who like him is a psychiatric nurse, has said he would never have wanted to be kept alive artificially, and that she wanted to “let him go”.

He would, she insisted, “never have wanted to be kept in this state”.

In January 2014, Lambert’s doctors, backed by his wife and six of his eight siblings plus a nephew, decided to stop the intravenous food and water keeping him alive. The decision was made after Lambert appeared to resist attempts to be fed, suggesting he wished to die.

However, his deeply devout Catholic parents, half-brother and sister won an urgent court application to stop the plan, arguing that he was suffering from a “handicap”, not an “incurable brain disease”.

Lambert survived for 31 days with no food and just 500 ml of liquid a day before the French administrative court ordered the resumption of his nutrition.

However, the Strasbourg panel has now voted 12 to five that intravenous support can stop.

The ruling is considered landmark as it sets a legal precedent for all of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states.

The five judges argued that what was being proposed was nothing more than depriving a severely disabled person – unable to communicate his wishes about his present condition – of two basic life-sustaining necessities, namely food and water, on the basis of a number of “questionable assumptions”.

Lambert was, according to the available evidence, in a persistent vegetative state, with minimal, if any, consciousness. However, he was not brain dead – there was a failure of function at one level of the brain but not at all levels.

He could breathe on his own (without the aid of a life-support machine) and could digest food.

“What, we therefore ask, can justify a state in allowing a doctor...in this case not so much to ‘pull the plug’ (Lambert is not on any life-support machine) as to withdraw or discontinue feeding and hydration so as to, in effect, starve Vincent Lambert to death?

“What is the overriding reason justifying the state in not intervening to protect life? Is it financial considerations? None has been advanced in this case. Is it because the person is in considerable pain? There is no evidence to that effect. Is it because the person is of no further use or importance to society, indeed is no longer a person and has only ‘biological life’?”

To their mind, the judges continued, a person in Lambert’s condition was a person with fundamental human dignity and must therefore receive ordinary and proportionate care or treatment which includes the administration of water and food.