Voting Rights

In the context of our campaign for last year, we published a final document on the topic of legal capacity and citizenship, presenting an overview of what a lack of legal capacity means for people with intellectual disabilities across the European Union.

To end our focus on elections and the right to vote, we published a document about the situation of legal capacity in Europe.

Last January, Inclusion Europe's Milan Šveřepa was interviewed by David Klimeš for the Czech news-server Aktuálně.cz. They talked about deinstitutionalisation, rights of people with intellectual disabilities and the use of EU funding to improve the social system in the country.

French member organisation is launching two great projects this month, focused on voting rights for people with intellectual disabilities.

Nous Aussi is a French organisation for people with intellectual disabilities and a member of Inclusion Europe. Nous Aussi is starting two projects on the right to vote.

How can co-production help improve political participation of people with disabilities? This was the question an event co-organised by Inclusion Europe addressed.

Inclusion Europe organised an event at the European Parliament together with 5 other NGOs. People from different organisations and some MEPs took part in the event.

Last Sunday was the last day of the European elections 2019. On Sunday night each European country was counting its votes. While this was happening, in front of the European Parliament in Brussels people could see a video of people with intellectual disabilities talking about voting.

As the votes in European Elections 2019 were being counted and first results announced on Sunday night, we could see a video of self-advocates talking about voting being played in front of the European Parliament in Brussels. And it became clear to me: These were elections like never before.

Our Voting Champion in April is Carmen Piquer of "Som Fundació". Carmen regained her right to vote in 2015, following lengthy legal procedures. Now she tells others about the electoral process and encourages them to go to vote.