On the 30th of August the European Parliament  will honour Simone Veil, women’s rights campaigner and first directly-elected President of the EP in 1979.

the European Parliament will honour Simone Veil, with the inauguration in Brussels of the  "Simone Veil Agora". 

Parliament has long had a tradition of naming its buildings and esplanades after important Europeans. The ceremony begins at 1200 CET in front of the EP’s main building in Brussels and is open to the public. 

Simone Veil: witness, fighter for women’s rights, convinced European

Ms Veil was born in 1927 to a Jewish family in Nice, France. With her family, she was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, then Bobrek and finally Bergen-Belsen. Her parents and brother died in the concentration comps.

She became France’s Minister of Health in 1974 and is most famous for leading the legalisation of abortion in 1975. Between1979-1982 she presided over the first directly-elected European Parliament and remained an MEP until 1993, when she returned to French politics.