Another year has gone by (seemingly in an instant) and with that, it is time to reflect on some of our achievements as the European Network on Independent Living, as well as other memorable moments.
- Just one month ago the European Commission published its Guidance on Independent Living, one of the flagship initiatives of the European Disability Rights Strategy. ENIL provided a lot of input into this document, as well as working with our members to submit good practices, so we were happy to see that much of it was taken on board. The Guidance gives us an additional tool to advocate for the right to Independent Living in Europe and challenge the use of EU money for institutions.
- In September, over 300 of us came together in Brussels for another memorable Freedom Drive. We were happy to see old friends, but also many new activists from all over Europe. Our brand new Freedom Drive website was launched in August and you can visit it to see all the pictures and recordings. You can also read about the Freedom Drive in this report.
- We celebrated our 35th Anniversary during the Freedom Drive by bringing together some of the founders, long term allies and our youth. We summed up the 35 years in this short and fun video.
- We said the final goodbye to Adolf Ratzka, one of our founders and a pioneer of Independent Living in Europe. Adolf died tragically this summer at the age of 80. We held a short memorial for him during the Freedom Drive and put together this video in his memory.
- Europeans elected their new Members of the European Parliament in June and we saw the new Commissioners take office at the beginning of December. We encouraged our members to vote, shared information about the elections, raised concerns about barriers to voting. We worked with Katrin Langensiepen and new MEPs to organise the Freedom Drive hearing in the European Parliament and delivered a short introductory seminar into independent living.
- We hosted a record number of three European Solidarity Corps volunteers at some point this year. They were all young disabled people who got valuable working experience, the chance to spend 6 months in Brussels and who contributed to our work. You can see videos with Fionn, Michael and Francesca on our YouTube.
- Access to personal assistance remained high on the agenda. During the regional members’ meeting in the North, in Stockholm, we heard about cuts of PA hours, loss of personal assistance services and the anxiety disabled people face over losing their support and the threat of institutionalisation. We held monthly Personal Assistance Watch meetings and, earlier in the year, published and launched a report on Personal Assistance commissioned by the International Labour Organisation.
- We worked on new topics and highlighted their importance for Independent Living. We looked at artificial intelligence, focused on climate change and started working on energy poverty, as part of our new project ASSERT.
- With the Global Coalition on Deinstitutionalisation, we held thematic sessions to raise awareness about the Guidelines on deinstitutionalisation, including in Emergencies, and celebrated the document’s 2nd anniversary. Through these, we reached disabled people, DPOs and also service providers from around the world. Collaborating with partners from the LITI-GATE project, we launched the Strategic Litigation Guide, and through the FURI project and Choice4All, collected evidence of EU funds investments into institutions.
- The work to build our new Strategic Plan 2026 – 2029 began. We heard from many of you in December and hope to hear from more of you through this survey.
Our new Strategic Plan, new reports, the data about access to Independent Living Pillars and much more is what awaits us in 2025. The fight for Independent Living continues.
For now, we thank our staff, interns, volunteers, Board members, the ENIL Youth Board, and all our members for contributing to a busy 2024. We thank our main funders – the European Union, Uloba – Independent Living Norway and STIL – for their support, as well as other donors, big or small. Finally, we thank the ENIL members for their contributions and for being proud, strong and visible together.
We wish you all a happy and peaceful holiday season!
