Besides being top candidate for the Green Left during the 2009 European Parliament election, Judith Sargentini also gained the title as the Netherlands’ “sexiest MEP candidate”.

The nomination of Mrs. Sargentini for the title of Sexiest MEP candidate along with 31 other Dutch MEP candidates has been the result of an IPPF EN  campaign carried out at national level by IPPF Member Association of the Netherlands, Rutgers Nisso Groep together with World Population Foundation and Choice for Youth..

The nomination of sexiest candidates was based on a comprehensive questionnaire that was produced by the Regional Office and sent out last March to IPPF Member Associations across Europe, as an initiative in the run-up to this year’s European Parliament elections.  The candidates were asked to indicate to what extent they agreed/disagreed on different statements in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights. The idea was to elect the candidates with the most progressive responses.

The purpose of such a campaign is to ensure that the new European Parliament takes up sexual and reproductive health and rights issues in its work both at domestic and international level.

In total 10 Member Associations have taken part in IPPF EN’s campaign entitled “Who are our Sexiest Members of the European Parliament!”: Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

At the initial launching of the campaign, IPPF EN Regional Director, Vicky Claeys pointed out: “This campaign, apart from being an awareness raising tool, will be an effective tool to pave the way towards establishing long-term strong partnerships with ‘SRHR champions’ in the European Parliament.”

The Regional Office plans to proceed with an analysis of the survey results which may benefit the future work of IPPF EN at European and national level.

So far, we welcome the fact that the Greens which have had a very prominent SRHR programme have registered an excellent score.

We also note that approximately half of the Members of the former European Parliament composition that we know are supportive of SRHR have been re-elected, among them some of our most charismatic parliamentarians such as Sophie In’t Veld, Raül Romeva and Michael Cashman.