Opening by Ségolène du Closel, One of Us Executive Director
European Parliament, Brussels – 15 October 2025
Dear friends,
One of Us counts 50 NGO members in 19 European countries. Their expertise is social help for fragile human life, with a remarquable specialization in “maternity support”.
Together with our president, Pr Tonio BORG, we feel deeply honored to be here today, in the heart of the European Parliament, with all of you, with more than 300 people from 16 European countries, from 18 to 70 years old, taking two days to be early today in Brussels, in a middle of a strike which made everything so difficult to come, men and women mobilized for three main objective:
- To make one fundamental right of the EU better know,
- To understand why and how this right is today a threatened right,
- To urge the political authorities in Europe to assume their responsibilities and all its consequences in making this right strong, secure and guaranteed for all women and men in the UE: this right, my friends, is the RIGHT TO MATERNITY SUPPORT.
Let me remind you of the binding texts who proclaim and protect it:
- The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 33: “Family shall enjoy legal, economic and social protection”
- Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), art 153: Social Policy as Shared competence: “Social protection of workers; improvement of working conditions, including Maternity”.
- EU Directives: Pregnant Workers directive (92/85); Work life Balance Directive (2019/1158).
All these binding texts agree in saying that maternity is not only a personal issue but one concerning all society.
Today, with the members of EP presents, we will have the privilege to be directly connected with reality, listening to 6 women who have a special experience of vulnerable maternity and who agree to share their amazingly moving stories with us.
As women, as citizen of their 6 different countries, as European citizens, they accept to take this time, travelling hundreds of km, to share an intimate and grave page of their own personal story. Why have we asked them to be here today? To make us able to think for a better future for women in Europe, not from any kind of preconceptual ideas, but from real human life and experience, from reality.
We urge today the European institutions from all parties to listen to these courageous women; to be creative to make this right about MATERNITY SUPPORT not only best known but real, not only real, but concrete, not only concrete but effective, not only effective but functioning all over the EU.
