|
Inclusion Europe has produced an easy-to-read brochure on the European elections to raise awareness and to engage people with intellectual disabilities to actively participate in the elections this year.
The brochure explains what the EU is, how the elections work, who is entitled to vote, and how to vote.
This brochure was produced separately for each country, click on the name of your country to access the brochure in your language:
Austria
The Czech Republic
England
Estonia
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Lithuania
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
News: The EDF has created a website to raise awareness about disability issues in the European Parliamentary elections, to encourage the inclusion of candidates with disabilities and to make voting more accessible:http://www.disabilityvotescount.eu/en/index.php
More information about the European elections:
Who may vote?
A common core of democratic rules applied everywhere namely the right to vote at 18 years old, equality of men and women and the principle of secret ballot.
Since the Maastricht Treaty (1993) every citizen of the EU member States who lives in another country of the EU may vote or stand for European election in their country of residence.
It shall be however underlined that often persons with intellectual disability have a so-called “legal incapacity” that prevent them from exercising their political rights, namely their right to vote and to stand for elections.
But if someone may vote at the national level, he/she is not under the legal incapacity system and he/she may vote as well at the European level.
Why is it important to vote and to stand for election at the European Parliament?
It is obviously first of all a matter of democracy. In order for the people elected to represent properly the opinions of the entire population of a State, each citizen entitled to vote shall exercise its right to vote. It is the same at the European level.
When?
The list of candidates is usually available about one month before the date of elections. But the parties decide their programme much earlier. It is crucially important to contact, discuss and influence the different candidates before the official set up of their programme of action. After the election, it is important to continue supporting your MEPs by keeping him/her informed of what is important for people with intellectual disabilities and their families in your country and in Europe.
What?
The 2009 European Elections are a chance to demand meaningful commitments from candidates and their political parties. Contents and demands should be divided into two larger groups: basic demands that all local and national associations should highlight, and specific concerns that these associations could choose relating to their main interest areas.
Basic demands - To include disabled people in all activities of the European Union, and to increase maintenance of and inclusion of disabled people in relevant European budget lines
- To support the European law against discrimination in employment
- To support the new European law against discrimination of disabled people in all areas of life
- To consult disabled people and their organisations about all issues that concern their lives
- To make election process accessible to people with intellectual disabilities
Specific concerns should relate to fields of EU competence. Some examples are below. Please contact Inclusion Europe Secretariat for more ideas.
Employment: People with intellectual disabilities are disadvantaged on the labour market where they face exclusion and discrimination. Measures should be taken in all States in order to ensure a better participation of people with intellectual disability in the field of employment and occupation. The EU adopted a Directive that condemns discrimination of disabled people in the labour market. The deadline for transposition of the Directive was December 2003. Several Governments have missed the deadline. The full transposition of the Directive is a must.
Social Inclusion and De-institutionalisation: Still in many countries people with intellectual disability live in large residential institutions. The quality of life in institutions is low and provides almost no access to society. Such institutions exclude people with intellectual disability from the society in general. The EU should take action to set standards of quality and recommendations to close large residential institutions while developing community based services for people with disabilities.
Information: Accessibility of information is one of the keys to participation of people with intellectual disability in all aspects of the life in society. It is essential to provide information in easy-to-read formats.
Education for all: Children with intellectual disability face many barriers and discrimination in the field of education. They are seldom accepted in regular schools. When that is the case, teachers are sometimes not trained to teach such pupils. Children with severe and profound intellectual disability often have no access at all to education. The inclusion of children with intellectual disability into the regular school system is an important step to enable them for their future inclusion in the society. The EU has several programmes related to education and training. However children and young people with intellectual disability have very little access to them. This must be improved.
Access to services: Measures should be adopted in order to establishing a system of adequate services to answer the needs of people with intellectual disability and their families. These needs can be related to housing, education/training, employment, leisure/sports, health, etc. Community-based support services for people with intellectual disability have been established, but there are too few of them. A wide range of community-based services is urgently needed to give persons with intellectual disability sufficient support for social inclusion. This is a key challenge for national and local authorities, as well as the European Union.
Poverty Measures should be adopted in order to counter the at-risk-of-poverty rate that is, according to activity status and household type, often very high for persons with intellectual disabilities and their families. Often one of the parents has to leave his/her job to care for their disabled child. The EU should support more families in their role of carers.
How?
Depending on your target during the pre-election campaign, you will adopt different strategies. You can: - Raise awareness about disability issues by sending letters to political groups and parties, to current MEPs standing for re-election, or to new candidates. You can also try to organise meetings when candidates are campaigning in your area.
- Raise awareness about disability issues by writing press releases in mainstream publications. Use personal stories and show that disabled people and their relatives are an important group of people who have a voting power.
- Encourage parents, self-advocates and organisations of disabled people to take part in the vote. You can start writing articles to disability specific media to alert them.
- Encourage decision makers to make voting accessible by writing letters to political groups, current MEPs, candidates MEPs, authorities responsible for administering elections.
Further information
- Four NGOs from the Civil Society have prepared a NGO Toolkit where you can find useful information about the Elections and position of Social NGOs with regards to the European Elections www.act4europe.org
- You can also consult the website of the European Disability Forum on www.edf-feph.org to find more information on the disability movement and its demands for the European Elections. There you will find the Manifesto adopted on 11 November 2003 by the European Parliament of Disabled People. It contains several demands for the European elections.
|
