The 5th European Parliament of Persons with Disabilities (EPPD) 2023 is a one-day event that unites over 600 disability advocates, policymakers and other stakeholders. It serves as a platform to discuss the rights of persons with disabilities and decide on the political demands of the European Disability Movement. The last event took place in 2017.
Theme of the 5th session: “Building an inclusive future for persons with disabilities in the EU.”
When: Tuesday, 23rd May 2023 (full day)
Where: It is hosted at the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Brussels.
So that the disability movement is fully represented, we would like to ensure that as many National Associations of the Deaf across the EU are in attendance to account for the deaf perspective.
Each EU Member State must form its own national delegations. This is led by National Disability Councils within which national coordinators are assigned. The national coordinators must provide details to the European Disability Forum (EDF) about their national delegations by 15th March 2023.
Therefore, EUD encourages you to contact your National Disability Council and ask to be put in contact with the national coordinator for the EPPD in order to express you interest in joining your national delegation by the first week of March at the latest. The contact list can be found тук.
The main way to fund travel to Brussels for the EPPD is by being sponsored by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) through their official visitors’ programme. However, MEPs have a quota of visitors per year and the amount of sponsorship available per person with a disability in the delegation is maximum €400. Accordingly, this would not cover all your travel, accommodation and national sign language interpretation service costs.
Therefore, you must ask your National Disability Council, to provide a national sign language interpreter for your delegation. Although there will be International Sign interpretation provided at the event, if you think this will not be sufficient for you to follow the event, we encourage you to ensure a national sign language interpreter is provided for by your National Disability Council.
There is also a standard funding rate from the European Parliament that can be supplemented by the MEPs. Unofficially, these are the indicative rates (subject to change in 2023) includes:
• Travel – €0.09 per kilometer/per person
• Accomodation – around €100 that can be increased around 50% for disability-related support.
For more information, please visit EDF’s website page on EPPD.
If you have any questions about this, the EUD contact point on EPPD is Charlotte Olhausen, Policy & Communications Officer – [email protected]