Vote for Animals in Italy is the third largest party! We are not joking — this is the result of the European elections, which brings to Brussels between 12 and 18 MEPs who have signed the commitments proposed by the Coalition we formed with ten other major Italian animal rights and anti-speciesist associations.
While waiting for the overall data from all 27 countries, thanks to the coordination of Eurogroup for Animals and the options that elected candidates in multiple constituencies will have to sign regarding their choice of just one of them (this concerns in particular the PD and Alleanza Verdi Sinistra) and a geographical distribution of seats that is not yet official, we are satisfied with this first assessment. There will be a stronger voice for other animals where decisions are made, thanks to a sizeable group of women and men who make and will make our issues one of the priorities of their parliamentary work, starting with the question of farming with the Citizens’ Initiative for the abolition of cages, the upcoming Common Agricultural Policy, opposition to the proposed reopening of hunting of protected species, support for the achievement of the dietary transition, and so on.
Of the 125 candidates who joined the initiative, 15 have been elected: Salvatore De Meo for Forza Italia; Pasquale Tridico, Mario Furore, Gaetano Pedullà, Carolina Morace, Valentina Palmisano and Dario Tamburrano for the Movimento 5 Stelle; Cecilia Strada, Brando Benifei, Alessandro Zan, Annalisa Corrado for the Partito Democratico; Mimmo Lucano, Ignazio Marino, Benedetta Scuderi, Cristina Guarda for Alleanza Verdi Sinistra.
More will join them, we are sure, from the very beginning of the new Legislature starting on 16 July, and still others will rally around individual votes in the European Parliament, thanks to the initiatives we will continue to carry out — with greater strength and hope — outside the Institutions.
With Vote for Animals (all the more so against a negative backdrop, given the rise in abstentionism which for the first time exceeded 50% in Italy) we are proud to have provided a useful, concrete, and focused tool for so many people (125 signatory candidates in Italy, more than 1,000 across Europe, over 1 million views of our website in just over a month! dozens of debate and discussion events across the country, the total contacts of every member association with its members and supporters through direct and social communication channels being too numerous to count, more than a hundred associations involved in the 27 EU countries) — a de facto, on-the-ground union among associations that, for some candidates, made the difference in favour of animal rights and increasingly clear positions — both positive and negative — on issues concerning animals by Italian parties and European groupings, because these issues deserve to be addressed just as much as any others.
In the coming weeks we will see the composition of the parliamentary groups in Brussels, but the Parliamentary Intergroup for Animals will certainly see a large part of its outgoing Coordination back in Brussels, thanks to the re-election of Luxembourg Green Tilly Metz, Dutch animal rights advocate Anja Hazekamp of the Left Group, Finnish EPP member Sirpa Pietikäinen and Bulgarian EPP member Emil Radev, Danish Socialist Niels Fuglsang, German Ecological Party member Manuela Ripa, Lithuanian Liberal Petras Auštrevičius, Polish Conservative Jadwiga Wiśniewska, German Social Democrat Maria Noichl and Slovak Liberals Martin Hojsík and Michal Wiezik.
This article was updated on 27/06/2024 with the final count of elected candidates.