The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the President of the ONCE Social Group, Miguel Carballeda, presented yesterday at the Ministry’s headquarters in Madrid the extraordinary coupon of the Spanish National Organization for the Blind (ONCE) dedicated to the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
ONCE will issue 5.5 million coupons next Saturday, July 1, the day the Spanish mandate begins. The aim of the ONCE Social Group is to achieve a Spanish Presidency of the EU with a social character, for which it presented, in early June at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels, a disability roadmap that includes, among other initiatives, the launch of the European Accessibility Center, the implementation of accessible voting in the 2024 European elections, the creation of the European Disability Card, the declaration of 2024 as the European Year of Women and Girls with Disabilities and a package of measures to improve the employability of people with disabilities in Europe.
“Our Semester will have a ‘social DNA,'” Albares declared during the event. “In line with the aspiration of a European Union for all citizens, we will give special priority to people with some kind of disability, who represent around 15% of the European population,” he continued. “Among other initiatives, we will give impetus to the European Disability Card, as a guarantee of equal access to benefits throughout Europe”, he announced. “Similarly, the debate on the right to active and passive suffrage for people with disabilities will be promoted,” he added.
For his part, Miguel Carballeda declared that, “for the ONCE Social Group, it is very important to add ‘our best paper’, the image of this coupon, to the start of the Spanish Presidency of the EU”. “With it we want to promote the ‘Spain social brand’ in all member countries and insist that only an EU that puts people at risk of exclusion first and thinks about them will be a united, strong and inclusive Europe,” he added.
