Yannis Vardakastanis, President of the European Disability Forum, announced this landmark accomplishment and noted the importance of such a strong signal from over one million Europeans to the European Union leaders, which cannot be ignored.
The campaign called on the European Union for legislation that will effectively protect disabled people from discrimination in all fields of life. In addition, the petition also aimed to raise awareness among the public on the difficult situation facing 50 million people in the EU.
Signatures were collected in a variety of ways. A special website was created for the campaign where people could log in and sign electronically. Surprisingly, more than 80% of the signatures were collected manually in 27 different Member States. Non-EU countries, including Croatia, Serbia and Albania, also contributed to the effort.
When launching the campaign, the EDF calculated the number of expected signatures for the Member States according to the population of the country. 17 Member States have achieved the number. Some countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Italy, and Ireland, have significantly surpassed the goal by collecting double or triple the amount of expected signatures. Several countries have decided to continue the campaign and collect signatures for to deliver to their national leaders at a later time.
The collected signatures were given to the European leaders at an outdoor event in Brussels where delegations of disabled people from at least 30 Europeans were present. The European Disability Forum specifically called on citizens from Belgium and neighboring countries to take part in the gathering with a key message of "Let’s defend our rights. Disabled or not, we are all citizens."
For further information:
European Disability Forum
1million4disability campaign
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