 Greetings everybody. My name is Barry Kulfer and I'm the Director of Research here at the IIEA in Dublin. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to this first event in the 2024 IIEA Disability Policy Series. So the second year we've run this series but the first year of 2024. Today we're going to hear about inclusivity for persons with disabilities, electoral rights of persons with disabilities in the European Union. We're absolutely thrilled and indeed honored to be joined by our speaker Alejandro Moledo who's the Deputy Director of the European Disability Forum. Anything around inclusivity, electoral rights are always important especially for a public policy think tank such as ours but just this year when so much of the world is going to vote and participate in elections it feels all the more important. Alejandro is going to be chaired and moderated today by someone who'll be known to many of you on the call Dr Vivian Rath is good enough to chair these events on behalf of the IIEA and it's much appreciated Vivian. Vivian is a well-known human rights activist and defender and he's a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Just the final word for me for those of you on the call there is Irish Sign Language Interpretation available. Many thanks to our interpreter and there will also be closed captions. Without further ado it's my great pleasure to hand over to Viv. Thanks everybody. Thank you very much Barry. It's a pleasure as always to be here on these sessions and it's hard to believe that this is number four of the sessions focusing on disability that the IIEA has has run and they've been very successful and thank you to the IIEA for moving the dial that little bit more forward and working to ensure the greater inclusivity of all disabled people and ensuring that we have a place at this discussion table as well. So thank you Barry for that. It's with great delight that we're joined today by Alejandro Maledo, Deputy Director of the European Disability Forum who has been generous enough to give us his time. I just want to note though a little bit of housekeeping. For our webinars it's important to note that the initial address and the Q&A session are on the record unless otherwise stated. I would ask you to submit your questions via the Q&A function on Zoom and we really welcome questions because in actual fact some of the most interesting parts of the discussion result from your questions so please do send them in. We would ask that when you're putting in your question that you identify yourselves and your affiliation before asking the speaker a question so that's quite important. Please endeavor to ensure that you take maybe some time to maybe tweet and where our handle is at EIA and we welcome the tweets because it's important to keep that discussion going on afterwards. So Alejandro will speak for about 20 or 25 minutes and then we will have our Q&A. In his address Mr Maledo will give an overview of the findings of the European Disability Forum Sixth Human Rights Report which is entitled political participation of people with disabilities. The report outlines the legal and practical barriers that persons with disabilities face when exercising their electoral rights in the EU elections across the 27 EU member states. This includes the right to vote, the right to stand as a candidate, the accessibility of the elections, proceedings, facilities or materials and accommodations for independent and secret voting. A reminder today again just that our presentation is on the record and I just want to say a few words about Mr Maledo now as well. As mentioned he's a Deputy Director of the European Disability Forum and he leads and coordinates the EDFs at advocacy and policy work at EU level. He also supports the work of the European Parliament Disability Interag Group. Mr Maledo is also a member of the Spanish Blind Organization, ONCE, for which he previously worked as a journalist and regional representative of young visually impaired people. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Maledo at the Recent National Disability Authority Conference in Ireland where he also presented on this book and I think you're really going to find it extremely interesting. Alejandro, you can now take the stage. It's to many many thanks Vivian and many thanks as well to IAEA for the kind invitation to present to you the work of the European Disability Forum in regards to political participation and more particularly the electoral rights of persons with disabilities. Can I have my slides on and we can there you go. So next slide please. So I'll try to make it as brief as possible but I will show you the findings and the main recommendations of our human rights report but first let me introduce the European Disability Forum for those of you who don't know us. We are the advocacy organization representing persons with disabilities at European level. We have over 100 member organizations members at European levels such as the European Blind Union, the European Union of the Deaf, the European Federation of Heart of Hearing, Inclusion Europe and those organizations at national level that represent the disability community in the case of Ireland DFI. So we are run by persons with disabilities and their families for persons with disabilities and our goal is basically to ensure that the EU implements the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and we do so by involving the European Disability Movement in the policy making at European level following the motto that we all know in the disability movement nothing about us without us. Next slide please. So this series of the Human Rights Report we recently well we launched last year the seventh Human Rights Report on Employment and this year we will issue the report looking at equality before the law so looking at the how member states are moving away hopefully from substituted decision making to supported decision making so what we do in this series is to take one of the articles of the CRPD in the case of today's presentation we will look at article 29 on political participation and we really look at the indicators that could help us to compare and find good practices and solutions in the implementation by the EU member states drawing some recommendations for national and European policymakers. In the case of this Human Rights Report the political participation we as it was mentioned we looked at the legal but also the practical barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from exercising their political rights. We looked at mostly the European Parliament elections also a little bit on municipal elections because as you may know the EU citizenship also grants us with the possibility to vote for the European Parliament and for municipal elections in another member state that we reside in so my case for example in Spanish but I live in Belgium and I could and I actually do vote in the Belgian municipal elections but I can decide whether I vote for the European so for the European Parliament elections with Belgian candidates or with Spanish candidates. We looked at in this report not only on those kind of barriers for the European Parliament elections both legal and practical but we also looked at cases that brought substantial change at national level so those cases in which our members run a campaign to change the law those cases of strategic litigation also run by disability activists and by disability organizations and we conclude by some recommendations again for national and European policymakers and at the end of my presentation I will also give you a little bit of an overview on the different advocacy campaigns that we have undertaken in this regard so to ensure the right to vote of persons with disabilities the right to stand as candidates and the accessibility of the European elections of all elections in the end. Next slide please so let's go into the topic let's say so actually we do have now 705 members of the European Parliament MEPs they will soon become 720 in the upcoming European Parliament elections this June and just a brief note on the number of MEPs less than five percent of them according to our knowledge have a disability so still not fully representative of the 15 percent of the total population that persons with disabilities represent for the European elections even even if we talk about European elections we cannot say that this is just one elections in reality these are 27 national elections at European level we as a matter of fact we do not have an electoral management body to oversee the European elections so this kind of variety and diversity of electoral systems at national level make makes it challenging to to come up with kind of harmonized recommendations on how to make the European elections accessible and inclusive to persons with disabilities but nevertheless we found some grounds and some possibilities to advocate for this and I will get into that a little bit later so let's move on to the to the different systems that we have in in Europe I will not spend too much time on this next slide please basically in the EU we have three different voting systems we have two countries one of them Ireland in which you have single transparent single trans transferable vote and then in in nine in 19 countries we have the possibility of a preferential vote whereas in in six countries in the European Union the lists are closed so you just pick the political parties ballot paper and you cannot have a preferential vote you just go with whatever the party has decided this is the case of my home country Spain for example so next slide this variety in the way we vote also poses as you can imagine some challenges when it comes to how to make the casting the vote accessible because in some countries you need to write an X in other countries you need to circle the candidate that you want to vote for in some countries you need to use in Romania for example you need to use a special stamp on a small booklet in country in some countries you even need to write the name of the you can write the name of the of the candidate the candidate in Belgium for example we have voting machines in Estonia you can vote through a website or through your mobile so you can see this variety in how we cast the vote also needs to take into consideration in how we ensure the inclusivity of the of the elections next slide in addition to how we vote there are different ways in which we can exercise this right so now I will show you some data on the different modalities or the different means for voting that people have in Europe some of these solutions are actually put forward just for persons with disabilities but here we kind of compile those alternative and advanced means of voting that are available in in the European Union so we have person in person early voting that is available in 11 countries so you go to a to a location and this obviously can be convenient for certain persons with disabilities if such location is accessible to them and they can avoid the the the election day if they wish to vote more calmly if possible in this kind of early voting place next slide we also have we also have nine countries well actually now 10 because Greece is actually right now reforming their electoral law and they are including postal voting so the possibility to vote by post and this again this can be a convenient solution for persons with disabilities so you can decide your your vote at home using your own assistive technology for example or with the assistance of a person of trust and you can vote by by post so you avoid going to into the polling station and the hassle of going to to the on election day so these possibilities are in some cases convenient for certain persons with disabilities which obviously but i will get into that in a moment this doesn't mean that countries shouldn't make efforts to make the polling stations accessible for persons with disabilities obviously next slide we also have the possibility in a number of countries to change or choose the polling station that is most accessible or most convenient to you this is obviously something that many persons with disabilities value in the the possibility of of choosing this polling station next slide and lastly the another possibility which is put forward in many cases for persons with disabilities and for people living in in in residential settings is to have the the the ballot box to come to your place so a mobile election commissioner come to your place and you can exercise the route to vote in some countries in the case of of let me just take the numbers of four countries this is only possible in certain locations so in hospital in residential institutions but in in many countries in the EU 15 to be more precise this possibility is available again in many cases to persons with disabilities even if it's some countries we notice that the paperwork and the procedure to request this mobile ballot box is is difficult next slide so now we move to the legal this is kind of the the context and now we'll move into the legal and practical barriers preventing persons with disabilities from exercising their electoral rights first we start with the right to vote and the right to stand as candidate next slide with regards to the right to vote as you may know certain countries restrict this right to people under total all partial guardianship fortunately we've seen and is shown in the report that lately there's been progress in EU countries in changing these kind of double standards as for persons mostly with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities so we see more and more countries that are ensuring that everyone regardless of whether you are under guardianship can exercise their right to vote and here I'm very very glad to tell you that there are two countries that recently have amended their laws to ensure that everyone including those under guardianship under total or partial substituted decision making regimes can actually exercise their right to vote this is the case of Luxembourg which changed their law last June and Slovenia who changed it very very recently and for the first time 3500 people under guardianship will exercise will be able to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming European elections so now all in all finally we have more than half of the EU member states ensuring that everyone without exception have the right to vote in the upcoming European elections the number now is 15 not 13 as in the in the number on the slide sorry this is this needs to be updated with the with the graphing designer but for a moment I just pasted the the names of the countries that have joined let's say the the progress on implementing the UN CRPD then regardless with regards to the countries that do exclude all or certain persons with disabilities we have countries in which certain persons with disabilities on a case by case case on a case case by case basis are deprived of the right to vote this number has gone down to six now and countries in which regardless if you are under total or partial guardianship as long as as soon as you are put into this substituted decision making regime you automatically lose your right to vote so these are the countries that really need to speed up their implementation of the of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities next slide please which is the right to stand as candidate and here we see that with the recent changes in Luxembourg and Slovenia we have 10 EU countries in which persons with disabilities regardless of their legal capacity can stand as candidate to the european parliament election this is unfortunate that some countries do believe that certain people have the right to vote but not the right to be a candidate but this is the way it is and we are working to promote that more and more candidates are persons with disabilities next slide please we move now to the practical barrier so we we will look at how we can ensure that persons with disabilities have equal access to the elections next slide and here we will look at three aspects first accessibility so accessibility of the proceedings the materials the information about the elections so not only the polling station or how to cast the vote we will also look at the recent accommodation in the case of electoral rights in and here as I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation is key to ensure that those alternative and advanced means of voting are available so persons with disabilities can choose what is most convenient or preferable to them as well as the possibility of using assistive tools and services to vote independently and in secret which is something that in the case of persons with disabilities is not always ensured and in this same vein we also look at the free choice of assistance which as you will see the moment is not guaranteed despite this being explicitly mentioned in the convention that persons with disabilities have the right to choose a person of their trust to assist them in in in voting if they wish to in certain EU member states this is not possible and you can only be assisted by an election official in the polling station which obviously is problematic next slide going into the accessibility the first pillar of of this of this section here we we start obviously with how accessible are the ballot papers or how accessible is the casting the vote because as I mentioned before in some cases if you need to write or to circle the the the name of the candidate that you want to have a preferential vote for this obviously poses problem for people like myself for example with a visual disability so in the case of ballot papers for example in the case of Luxembourg that I just mentioned in the reform they also introduced certain elements to make the ballot paper more accessible more usable not only for persons with disabilities but also for everyone actually so looking at the contrast of the ballot paper or the font in Norway for example in their legislation they even specify the the font type and the font size of the ballot paper to ensure the legibility of the of the of the ballot paper and the understandability so I know in Ireland for example you also made some changes in your ballot paper to to improve the understandability and the usability of it and obviously and as in every aspect concerning accessibility there is always room for improvement concerning the required task what I mentioned like how to mark the preferential vote this is also a challenge that can be overcome in certain cases with assistive technology that we will show in a moment and in the case of Estonia which is the only country in which they vote through they can vote as an early vote through the internet through a website this website which you can access through your computer or through your mobile phone it complies with the web accessibility standard so it's an accessible way for persons with disabilities to vote if they don't want to go to the polling station and do it and doing it in in person concerning the only two countries that use voting machines Belgium is one of them and Bulgaria is another one unfortunately the voting machines that we have in Europe do not include much accessibility features on it so this is this is still a huge room for improvement in the US they have advanced all in this aspect as they use voting machines but nevertheless the disability community is not yet totally satisfied with the level of accessibility but again accessibility there is always room for improvement next slide if we look at beyond the the ballot paper and we look at the legislation we see that now 19 countries because Austria joined this group as well have introduced direct or indirect legal provision as for the built environment that would cover polling stations again sometimes they think of accessibility in a very narrow way thinking only of people using wheelchairs so here is where we see like good practices in certain member states in which they look at also the accessibility of people with intellectual disabilities or people with other forms of disability not just you know reduce mobility which which is great next slide and then if we look at the election information which is obviously very important as well we seen that even if the European sorry the yeah the national election management bodies have different levels of of accessibility of their websites and communication we do see that more and more member states are cooperating actually with disability organizations to produce materials and to inform about the accessibility and the possibilities of the elections in place and in the case of five election management bodies for example if I'm not mistaken they do provide specific information about the accessibility of the polling station which is obviously very useful for persons with disabilities next slide then another important elements of the of the elections are the the the political parties no and the and the media we do have a certain legislation that ensures that audio video audiovisual media services are or should become progressively are accessible to persons with disabilities and this could obviously cover information related to to the elections like candidates debates or interviews with candidates and so forth and we do see that some countries have really good practices in making a political content more accessible to persons with disabilities but on the other side the political parties remain as a kind of like a voluntary basis and this really depends on the political will of this of these parties to make their information and their communications more accessible there is no law obliging them to do so next slide please and moving on to the second pillar so reasonable accommodation as I mentioned at the at the beginning if we combine the provision of this alternative and advance means of voting and the provision of assistive tools we see that most EU member states they do have so we see that some the majority of member states they do have the possibility of ensuring the provision of reasonable accommodation through this means 23 in total only four countries do not have any kind of this alternative means for voting or do not provide assistive tools to ensure that you can vote independently and in secret in two of these four countries France and Belgium for example they they claim that having a proc the possibility of a proxy voting for you which is possible in Belgium and France you give the possibility for another person to vote on your behalf they do they do claim that this could be considered as an alternative means of voting but from our point of view this is not a way to claim that you are complying with the with the obligations of the convention to ensure that persons with disabilities can exercise the right to vote you are passing that duty to a third person which is yeah it's a it's a can be a convenient way for for people but not a way to claim that you are complying with you know your commitments as for disability policies next slide yeah and then well this I already mentioned at the beginning the different ways for voting early voting or alternative means of voting so postal voting in person changing or choosing your polling station and the possibility of having an election commission coming to your place of residence next slide and if we look at the provision of assistive tools we see that many countries and actually in in in a in a number of them is thanks to the disability organization cooperating with the electronic management authority the countries provide certain assistive tools such as braille templates tactile stencils as well magnifiers in the in the polling station lamps the provision of accessible transport to the polling station even helplines in sign language for example so there is a wide range of possibilities here for member states that again it really depends on the voting system that they have at national level next slide and here I included in the slide some pictures on the on the this assistive tools so I believe actually that one of them is from Ireland tactile tactile stencil on the bottom right side on the top right there is a mobile ballad box and then on the left side of the of the picture that is if I'm not mistaken braille kit so information provided in braille next slide and then if we look at the secrecy of the vote this obviously depends on the everything that we've been presenting until now so the accessibility of the process and the provision of reasonable accommodation so depending on how well suited these provisions are the country will be ensuring the possibility of having a secret vote but in the report we also note certain countries in which the lack of these alternative means of voting or the lack of you know being able to choose a person of trust to assist in voting could compromise the this principle of the secrecy of the of the vote next slide and this is the case of Greece and Malta I know that our Greek members are at the moment in discussions with the government to change the law to ensure that persons persons with disabilities can decide an assistance of their choice and they are not you know obliged to get help from an election official in the polling station and obviously if you think of a small community a small village you may not want to disclose the your vote to a stranger so our position in this regard is to allow persons with disabilities to decide whom will assist them in casting the vote next slide and we come to the end of my presentation concerning the recommendation that we draw from all these findings and information we just want to make sure that countries or national electoral laws or European electoral law if we ever have a good one will guarantee that everyone has the right to vote and the right to stand as candidate regardless of legal capacity status we obviously from EDF we are against any kind of substituted decision making regime and we welcome very much the progress that you've been making in Ireland in this regard with the new law on supported decision making we really hope it's a success but for the sake of ensuring the electoral rights of persons with disabilities we want to decouple let's say the right to vote and the right to stand as candidates or your electoral rights from the legal capacity status we also promote accessibility by requiring member states to maximize the accessibility of the proceedings the facilities the materials the information of their elections but catered to their culture to their voting system the voting culture that they have a national level because I've you seen in my presentation the diversity of systems we have in Europe is immense well immense maybe a big too big but quite quite great and then to provide reasonable accommodation so different ways of voting that are convenient for everyone not only for persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic that was proven again in Croatia for example when not only persons with disabilities use the mobile ballot boxes people that could that could not leave their homes had to use these ballot boxes as well these mobile ballot boxes as well so the provision of alternative and advance means of voting for all voters or for persons with disabilities are a way to ensure that people have a convenient way to exercise the right to vote and the provision of assistive technologies that can facilitate that you can do it alone independently at your ease is also important and lastly which is obvious and actually is explicit in the UN convention is to ensure that everyone can choose the the person to assist them in and as I mentioned in different parts of my presentation one key success factor that we highlight in the report is that in those countries in which the electoral authority has cooperated with the disability organization is where it has worked the best because at the end of the day we are the experts of our own lived experiences and knowing the say the peculiarities of the voting system at national level the organization of persons with disabilities and the electoral authorities can do really work well together in finding these solutions to improve accessibility or introduce these kind of measures to ensure a reasonable accommodation next slide and I think they will be my last one well this is the promotion one so I can paste the link on the chat box but you can easily find it online the report I'm happy that is outdated thanks to this kind of progress in Luxembourg in Greece and Slovenia and I hope that it will get more and more outdated we need to find a way to update the maps and then this last slide is to briefly mention the policy the advocacy that we've been carrying out at EDF concerning the persons with disabilities and the political participation the european parliament has proposed a new EU electoral law because believe it or not we have the same kind of rule since 1976 and in this we have worked very closely with the european parliament and we managed to include the recommendations or most of the recommendations that I just mentioned in this proposal to the council the council is the EU institution that represents our national governments our countries and is the council the only institution that can decide on an EU electoral law so the parliament has proposed but it's a prerogative of the council to decide if they take it or not and for the moment they have not taken it it's a different story the rights of citizens like myself mobile EU citizens you know residing in another EU member states here is the commission that has the authority to propose new legislation and they have introduced a new legislation as for the electoral rights of mobile EU citizens like myself so here we managed to include also some improvements as for accessibility of the elections or the information to the mobile citizens so this legislation actually have in my view this is a personal opinion more chances to be adopted in the near future not for these upcoming elections in June but I believe these these directives will be adopted and then more recently and good to check the commission has released one of the actions of the disability strategy it's a guide so it's not binding but it's a good source of information like our report on a guide on good electoral practices for the participation of persons with disabilities in elections uh you I hope they can distribute these these slides to you so you have easily accessible the links um this guide kind of gathers this kind of best best practices or projects at national level uh for the political participation of persons with disabilities and at the annex of this guide the commission has included some sort of guidance because even though it's title guide it's not guiding much it's just a compendium of good practices but good food for thought or for inspirations at national level on how to improve the the voting system so it's just worth mentioning the commission also released a recommendation to member states in which they they mentioned that the persons with disabilities should be granted the right to vote but in this case they did not use our approach as for you know regardless of legal capacity status they recommend member state to do at the minimum like a case by case basis so with the possibility for the person to to seek redress or at the court to challenge that decision but we believe that by default everyone should have the right to vote so we were not so satisfied so pleased with the approach taken by the commission in this regard and lastly in case you are interested the the OSCE also released a set of recommendations concerning the political participation of persons with disabilities and next slide and I think that's it I know I included one more sorry I think I'm talking too much but I will stop now basically just to tell you about our plans for the upcoming European elections I mean this is a an advocacy campaign that we are running to ensure the right to vote of persons with disabilities to improve the accessibility of the elections but this is not all obviously from the European disability movement we are as we always do we are putting forward political proposals like new ideas for the European Commission the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to really improve the the living conditions of persons with disabilities to put forward legislation that that can go down well go down be transposed let's say at national level for our members at national level also to have this possibility to go beyond and and really push for the implementation of the CRPD so we have this manifesto for the upcoming European elections with loads of proposals I think there are over 80 and based on the manifesto we have recently launched a disability rights pledge that we hope you can distribute among your candidates to become MEPs in June it's a pledge to commit you know to work together with the disability movement to implement the convention to revise the current European disability strategy to re-establish the European Parliament disability intergroup in the parliament because this is not a given it needs to be re-established every term and for these MEPs to join the the intergroup so it's just a one pager that candidates you know commit to defend disability rights we also at EDF have developed certain guidelines or checklists for political parties and candidates to run their campaigns their communications their events in an accessible manner so it's kind of easy to digest entry point into accessibility and hope to make your communication social media meetings etc accessible so you can access through that link as well and our third kind of big objective of this campaign or this european elections campaign is to ensure as I said before that we have more policymakers with disabilities at the moment we have barely five percent of the total european parliament with disabilities and we want to see more people with disabilities as members of the european parliament so I stopped there I think if I'm not mistaken I think that was the last slide yay good Alejandro thank you very much sorry I talked a lot and oh that's okay I mean there is a lot of information to cover and it really was a really insightful presentation and I know because I've read the EDF report on this that is only a snapshot of the amount of detail and the amount of information that is in that report so I think you did extremely well to capture so much of it and in such a broad way and what I what I really liked of course is that you detailed the many barriers that exist but you also outlined some of the successes and some of the positive actions that are being taken in countries and I think that's really important because it also outlines to other countries or demonstrates to other countries that they can make changes and these changes make a significant difference to the lives of disabled people and when we just think about it and just for our audience here today that in 2022 the EU population over the age of 16 at 27 percent of the EU population over the age of 16 had some form of disability so when we look at that that's about 101 million people are one in four people are four people adults in the youth I should say with disability so it's a huge amount of people that a huge voting bloc who have rights and in many cases these rights are denied and I know you spoke about that the fact that there are some barriers that exist to people with maybe psychosocial disabilities or mental health difficulties or intellectual disabilities that actually prevents them from voting all together and I think there's some kind of an estimation and you can you can correct me if I'm wrong Alejandro but I think it's put in around the 800 000 EU citizens you may be deprived of the right to participate in elections because of the disabilities yeah I mean Alejandro that's a phenomenal amount of people it got reduced in the doing these past years because of those big countries changing their national laws like Germany France Spain as well in fact so it got reduced to it is estimated that around 400 000 now so yeah but still it's still a colossal number of people who who are being disenfranchised and not only that but I mean the impact that must have on their sense of belonging in Europe their sense of community and the the failure to be involved in the decision-making process so and look I mean there are there are a number of questions after coming in Alejandro have you had an opportunity to catch your breath because yes you have to get some you have to get some quick fire questions in between now and we always finish at 1 p.m. or sorry 2 p.m. here so we try to keep it on time you know so I'm going to that our first question came in from Emma Richardson Richard a researcher with the IIEA and so the question reads as following follows okay you mentioned that less than five percent of current MEPs are persons with disabilities as many people are now coming to understand not all disabilities are visible do you think that candidates for the EU parliament should identify their personal disabilities when becoming candidates and could this be done to benefit disability awareness in general that's a good question and I forgot that's a really good question I forgot to mention that that uh I mean we uh we um we calculated ourselves this percentage of five percent but obviously this is based on our knowledge so either because it's a visible disability or because the MEP himself or herself openly disclosed the disability this doesn't mean that there may be others other MEPs with the invisible disability so it's a really good point the case of candidates disclosing whether they have a disability or not I think this is as always our position is that this is up to the person to to decide if they want to disclose or not their disability yeah and sometimes even it is we we tend to to to see that some policymakers think that because an MEP or a policymaker has a disability that person should be working on disability policies and it's not the case it shouldn't be the case persons with disabilities can we working and we do have actually in this legislative term we have had MEPs with disabilities that have not disclosed their disability or with a visible disability but that were not that active on disability matters and it's totally totally fine because disability should be everywhere it's uh it's part of the diversity of our society totally yeah and I think of course Alejandro and you would know this as well from your work is that disclosing a disability is a very personal point and many may have experienced negative perceptions and negative and criticisms in relation to disability in their lifetime and may not feel comfortable doing it but what I noticed Alejandro and I just wanted to bring your point you mentioned that that five percent figure um and that's actually if I'm correct in saying that's considered quite high because if I know in some research that was done um in the last year or two I think in in the UK and across other different countries in Europe that in terms of their local parliaments or local areas that it was at that level of representation was one percent and less yeah yeah so but still far from the 15 percent huh entirely I mean I'm not I'm not celebrating five percent by no means unfortunately we have no idea of the figure here in Ireland and in actual fact if you don't mind me saying so myself and two other colleagues Ellen or Flynn uh in University College Galway and of course Ifa Price in University Galway and myself are doing some research in this elections on the experiences of disabled candidates and this will be the first time that kind of research has been done here in Ireland but we have no no real idea of how many disabled people are actually in our current government you know and okay so I have another question and we have to try and get through all of these people are very interested I have a question from Neve Nehybrid and I know Neve Neve was a was an alumni of Trinity College Dublin and a fantastic journalist welcome Neve delighted to have you here um in line with ensuring electoral rights and increased accessibility for people with disabilities do you expect to see more disabled candidates participating in elections throughout EU member states or is different action required we are doing our best but it's up to the political parties to also set the the right context let's say we all I mean in what we've seen in the presentation that we have a wide variety of of voting systems but at the end of the day it's also in all our countries we have more or less strong political parties that they should have also the responsibility of making their meetings their headquarters their communication and and their information accessible and inclusive and to proactively approach their members with disabilities because persons with disabilities also have different ideologies sometimes it seems like we should also have the since we have a disability no no no and we all have different ideologies different political views and parties should make a proactive effort this is our view to approach persons with disabilities and to include them in their in their tickets and we we send letters to the EU political parties but as you know well even these are european elections the candidates are decided by the national parties so it is really really a campaign that will be mostly led by national disability activists and disability organizations to reach out to the political parties to really encourage them to to to approach persons with disabilities and include them and give them a chance and support them as candidates so they can campaign unequal footing with other candidates i think it's very interesting Alejandro and you have probably noted this as well that our first two questions today actually relate to disabled people running as candidates yeah there is an appetite there is yeah i think there is and i i'm just thinking do you think and that countries are taking too narrow a view when it comes to the public and political participation of disabled people as in the focus is usually accessibility of voting stations as opposed to considering supports for disabled candidates what are your thoughts Alejandro i think it's shifting i think it's shifting slowly but shortly as everything unfortunately but it's shifting and we we have seen progress i showed that there's been progress in in certain elements and we've seen that for example the the latest one that we we have the the the changes in Slovenia and in Luxembourg in Luxembourg for example they also took this opportunity to make their ballot paper more accessible and in Slovenia since they changed the national law they not only changed it for persons with disabilities under guardianship to be able to vote but also to be able to stand as candidates so but nevertheless as we showed in the in the slide the number of countries ensuring the right to vote regardless of legal capacity status is higher than those ensuring the right to stand as candidates so we still see this kind of double standard if you wish that that is not yet there but we see the progress at least well and i think you know it's great as well to see and you can help me with the pronunciation Alejandro Marga last year ian making history in spain uh what are you with am i right in pronouncing that correct you mean the the mp with uh with intellectual disability yes that's grand yeah margal seran yeah she's uh in my uh in my region in valencia yes yeah yeah it's it's it it's fantastic um that somebody is breaking the mold but i'm sure uh that that person had to overcome uh very significant uh societal challenges uh in order to to access that but it hopefully we can see more of that in the future yeah and oh okay so we have another question in here from Dorothy Stewart thank you Dorothy uh Dorothy asked the question voter apathy is also a challenge across many countries regarding regardless of ability and is this accounted for in your figures presented sorry i didn't understand so voter apathy ah voter apathy yeah yeah yeah well but that's uh that's a condition that uh that affects us all as society not just persons with disabilities but uh i think this is um yeah this is this is serious and um and from from from our let's say uh beat of responsibility as the european disability uh european disability forum we are doing our best to to try to show why voting in the european elections is important i think we have launched we are launching actually we are preparing materials on reasons to vote like uh it's not only the you know electing MEPs that have big salaries and all it's about your rights as a passenger it's about the accessibility of products and services in the whole uh EU internal market it's about uh anti-discrimination laws when you travel across countries it's about the european disability card it's about you know there are so many competencies that affect our everyday life that are decided at european level that what we are trying to do is to compile them and we have a great report by the way that i didn't include in the slide it's called your rights in the EU we will we will revise it this year and here we cannot compile all the rights that persons with disabilities have achieved at european level so uh this is what it's it's a stake so it's not only the proposal that we as disability movement are putting forward to political parties it's about you know the rights that we have that are not you know set on stone if tomorrow we have a you know all the eurosceptics taking over uh the parliament and the commission and basically going backwards i mean we could lose uh rights in europe so absolutely yeah absolutely so and i think that's a really good point there that you're making that uh and there's an article in one of the papers in in ireland here at the moment in where you know the comment is that it's important to use our vote to see the change that you know the change that we want uh so and i think that's you're making that point the last question here before we finish uh alehandro is that is from kiran finlay hi kiran i know kiran as well we have a very good irish contingent here today uh alehandro so lots of interest from ireland kiran finlay is in the national disability authority um he asked the question alehandro mentioned plans to revise the eu electoral act what are the key changes that the edf would like to see as part of this updated legislation to strengthen the voting rights of person with disabilities in line with the un crpd yeah i can tell you because that's already kind of uh um done in a way so we included um the right to vote regardless of legal capacity status um all of this is in the parliament proposal for a new eu electoral law that member states they need to agree on but they haven't yet and they will not in the near future from my um personal opinion because it has other more uh controversial proposals on it so first i will tell the disability related um um parts provisions of these proposals that are good and i think they are not contested by member states so in this case it's kind of good that our parts are not that controversial so the right to vote regardless of legal capacity unfortunately there is not the right to stand as candidate regardless of legal capacity so the right to vote yes but the right to stand is not there the obligation for member states to maximize accessibility the obligation to member states to provide reasonable accommodation to persons with disabilities to vote independently and in secret and the obligation to ensure that persons with disabilities can choose their assistance of their choice and the accessibility of the european campaigns the campaigns run at european level by european political parties or european movements as they call it so these are kind of the the good improvements as for persons with disabilities the problem is that this new electoral law that the parliament has put forward has other controversial things that the member states are not so happy to accept like for example to make everyone vote on the same day they propose the ninth of may which is europe day or to have transnational list instead of national list so we'll have a ballot paper with number of candidates from all EU member states instead of me voting only spanish and you only irish candidates the obligation to have a lead candidate so the the first in the list would be considered by the the president of the of the european commission so it has some kind of other things that for member states is a no-go for the moment and unfortunately this is kind of blocking all the positive other positive parts that are included in this proposal from the parliament but we'll see and in the near future we can see some amendments concerning only disability rights or certain parts of this proposal included and not other so it's still up in the area it's it's very much in the balance still alahandra yeah okay so just before we finish up i and this is only a quick um i can go to give a quick comment here firstly we had a lovely comment in from me if karten thank you may have and may have just noted alahandra that if it's a fantastic session many thanks to all involved and in particular to and alahandra for his clear informative and insightful presentation and answers and so well done to all our last question for today alahandra just a quick response on this and i think this is actually a really important question and a great way to wrap up our session today and this is a question from barry colfer the director of research here in the ia he just noted thanks for the presentation can you please say what the cost of government in action would be when it comes to electoral rights of people with disabilities both as candidates and participants so in what way is society worse off in such a scenario a quick response alahandra so that's a difficult question a quick response i don't know i think it's a good way to wrap up alahandra yeah no i think that the cost of not of having non fully complete or inclusive democracy is huge because in the end you cannot claim yourself democratic if you have a first class citizen and second class citizen so our democracies reflect a little bit the society that we want to be so i would leave it there i mean if we are truly about our diversity our democracy should really reflect that thank you very much alahandra and i think it's a absolutely an important point to make about that we would be less off as a as a country and the world without the voice of all of our citizens involved in decision-making processes so on that note alahandra i would like to thank you very much for coming today to to give a really really insightful presentation and you can see how much it meant to people by the number of very detailed questions that we received and the the interest that's there so thank you very much i'd also like to thank you thank venessa venessa thank you for your support and of course to the iiea for hosting this session and we're looking forward to more sessions during the year there are some wonderful topics planned for uh later on in the spring and the summer and we look forward to having you attend those as well so from all of the team here today i'd like to wish you all a lovely afternoon a very relaxing weekend and i look forward to talking to you all again soon take care and goodbye