Diana wins campaigning award

5.05.23pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 3rd Jun 2008

Local Liberal Democrat Euro MP, Diana Wallis, will tonight, Tuesday, be awarded a prestigious campaigning award at an event in Brussels.

Diana Wallis MEP has been a long-time campaigner for promoting awareness of the Europe-wide emergency number and tonight will be given the award for Outstanding Political Initiative jointly with the European Commissioner Viviane Reding.

This award is as a result of the work Diana Wallis MEP has done in attempting to raise the awareness of 112, the European Emergency Number, in particular her work in getting 530 MEPs (the highest ever number) to sign a Written Declaration in the European Parliament demanding, amongst other things, a much better service provided by the 112 facility across the EU.

Diana Wallis a Vice President of the European Parliament said in advance of tonight's award ceremony:

"Obviously I am delighted to be receiving the award but there is still a great deal of work to be done by the European Commission and especially the Member States to raise awareness of Europe's emergency number. For instance, a recent survey showed that nearly 8 out of 10 people in the UK had no knowledge of the 112 number."

Notes:

112 is a Europe wide emergence number. It is not a replacement for national emergency numbers such as 999 in the UK.

Tonight's award is by the European Emergency Number Association (EENA) Advisory Board: www.eena.org/

A written declaration is a text of a maximum of 200 words on a matter falling within the European Union's sphere of activities and needs to be signed by over half of the MEPs i.e. 392. MEPs can use written declarations to launch or relaunch a debate on a subject that comes within the EU's remit.

Report: The European Emergency Number 112 by Eurobarometer http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_228_sum_en.pdf