european disability forum

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"We have got the million!"


In only 9 months of time, the European Disability Forum has met the ambitious challenge launched last January: to collect one million signatures across the European Union in favour of comprehensive EU disability legislation.


Brussels , 3 October 2007 – "We have got the million signatures!. We have met our challenge" announced yesterday Yannis Vardakastanis, President of the European Disability Forum  to the 118 member organisations of the umbrella organisation of disabled people, actively involved in the "1million4disability" campaign. "This is a landmark success for our movement", said Vardakastanis, "but most important, this is a strong signal coming from a million Europeans to the European Union leaders, that can hardly be ignored".

A campaign website was specially created for the promotion and collection of electronic signatures. Nevertheless, more than 80 % of the signatures were collected manually across the 27 Member States. The signatures have also been received from Iceland, Norway and non-EU countries such as Croatia, Serbia or Albania.

"In the past weeks, EDF Secretariat has been overwhelmed by an incredible number of boxes containing the signatures. During the last months, we have received numerous messages of support, including those from President Pöttering of the European Parliament, President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano and Massimo D'Alema Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. We have also received very interesting and encouraging reactions from numerous individuals, with and without disabilities " explained yesterday Carlotta Besozzi, Director of the European Disability Forum.

17 Member States have reached the number of expected signatures, a quota that was calculated by the EDF when launching the campaign, according to the population of each country. Some countries have doubled or tripled the number of signatures expected, such as Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Cyprus or Ireland. Only in Slovenia, more than 65 000 signatures were obtained (1500 % over the expected quota). Several countries have decided to go on with the campaign and to hand over the collected signatures to their national leaders at a later stage.

The campaign petition, officially launched by the European Disability Forum on 23 January 2007, called on the European Union for the adoption of comprehensive disability legislation that will effectively protect disabled people from discrimination in all fields of life. Based of the principle of participatory democracy, the petition also aimed to raise awareness among public opinion on the difficult situation faced by 50 million disabled people in the EU, confronted to discrimination and exclusion in all fields of life.

Yannis Vardakastanis, EDF President: "At present, legislative measures towards disabled people are limited, despite the existing legal basis in the EU Treaty. For the past 4 years, the EDF has been trying to convince the European Union about the vital need to effectively protect the rights of disabled people. Surprisingly, we have managed to do so at the international level, with the recent adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but we have not yet managed to obtain a clear commitment from our own European leaders. Today we can say that we do have the support of one million European citizens. We are confident that public opinion will continue backing this proposal and that decision-makers will listen to the voices of their electorate".

The signatures collected will be handed over to the European leaders next Thursday in Brussels, during an outdoor event that will gather delegations of disabled people from at least 30 European countries. José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission and Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, have confirmed their attendance to the event, to which will also participate various Belgian authorities and artists.

The European Disability Forum has particularly called on all citizens from Belgium and the neighbouring countries to join this gathering, which key message will be: "Let's defend our rights. Disabled or not, we are all citizens".

 

A full press pack on the campaign and the 4th of October event can be downloadable from: http://cms.horus.be/files/99909/MediaArchive/pdf/1million4disability-event-presspack-EN.pdf