It has already been ten years since we first initiated a professional and political dialogue with representatives of disabled organizations on how to best help disabled people, Minister of State for Social and Family Affairs Miklós Soltész said on Wednesday at the launch of a publication on the state of the system for supporting the disabled in Hungary and Europe.

The book launch was also attended by Hungarian MEP Ádám Kósa, the first and only deaf member of the European Parliament, who is also co-author of the book. Mr. Soltész encourage people to vote for Kósa at the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, saying that Kósa had every chance of representing Hungarians and disabled people for another five years in Brussels.

Mr. Kósa – using sign language – conveyed the message that the book was an attempt at presenting the current situation, the needs of disabled people and the goals of the various programmes designed to help them. Kósa wrote in the foreword of the book that there are about 600,000 disabled people in Hungary and some 80 million within the European Union and expressed his hope that the studies will be instrumental in helping them.

At the launch, director for Social Relations for the governing Fidesz party Zsolt Nyitrai said that Hungary had one of the best social programmes, the Erzsébet programme, which has so far provided recreation opportunities for 250,000 Hungarians, including 100,000 children and 6,000 disabled people.

(Ministry of Human Resources)