The 2023 financial year showed, through firm and undeniable advances, that disability also makes the world go around and the ONCE So-cial Group leads many of the initiatives in fa-vour of these people. Participation in major in-ternational meetings, such as the work with the Spanish Presidency of the European Union and the Ibero-American and European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean Summits, managed to include the rights of people with disabilities and Sustainable and Inclusive Development on the international agenda. 5.1 International cooperation Keep reading Keep reading Keep reading The ONCE Latin America Foundation (FOAL) celebrated its 25th anniversary in Spain and consolidated its work in 19 sister countries; events were held with the partici-pation of the director of AECID and the au-thorities of ULAC and ICEVI Latin America, the two main regional partner organisations of FOAL in this region. At the national level, they toured around Spain with “Compro-metidos con Latinoamérica” (Committed to Latin America), meetings in all the auto-nomous communities to raise awareness of FOAL’s work, together with workers, affilia-tes, local authorities, regional cooperation agencies and consular representatives from Latin American countries. On the other hand, the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Conven-tion on the Rights of Persons with Disabi-lities (CRPD) was commemorated with va-rious events and participation. At the European level, in 2023 we played a leading role in one of the milestones of the Eu-ropean Disability Strategy 2021-2030 when the ONCE Foundation was awarded the ho-nour to lead a committee for the European Accessibility Centre ‘AccesibleEU’, which re-presents one of the great ambitions of this strategy. Thus, a European resource centre has been created in Spain to tackle the mul-tiple areas affecting accessibility (built en-vironment, ICTs, services, etc.), which will serve to increase the coherence of accessibi-lity policies and facilitate access to relevant knowledge in the 27 EU member states. With a strong push from all executive areas, together with CERMI and other allies such as the EDF, fundamental steps were taken to make the European Disability Card and the European Parking Card a close reality, which will allow their holders greater recognition of their disability in member countries. Another example of the weight of the ONCE Social Group in European policies was the participation of a large delegation of the Group together with CERMI in the 5th Euro-pean Parliament of People with Disabilities in the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Brussels. More than 600 representatives of the associative disability movement in Eu-rope witnessed the adoption of the Manifes-to that will provide guidance to the political programmes of the candidates for the Eu-ropean Parliament and the future European Commission to be appointed after the 2024 elections. Likewise, in 2023, the quota of participation of young people with disabilities in the Eu-ropean Parliament in Strasbourg was repea-ted, with an important influx of young Spa-niards promoted by the ONCE Social Group, thus contributing to the promotion of inter-national culture in the group. Swipe to read more