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The European Parliament is an institution that has been much more favourable to the engagement of women in the European project. On July 17, 1979, during its first session, the parliament—designated by universal suffrage for the first time—elected Simone Veil (born in 1927) as president elect of the assembly, which at the time only had restricted powers. Her task was now to show that the European Parliament was an important actor in the construction of Europe. Veil particularly developed the institution’s external relations, by taking positions on major international issues, and even by engaging in what resembled diplomatic conversations with third countries, which welcomed her more as a head of government than as president of an assembly. On the international stage, the role of the Commission, which had no popular legitimacy, was poorly understood at the time, and the revolving presidency of the European Council was ill-defined. Outwardly, Veil was consequently something of the embodiment or representative of Europe. She constantly sought to show that this first Parliament elected by universal suffrage had legitimacy and an independence from the Community’s other institutions, and that it embodied democratic Europe. In December 1981, Veil was the first woman to receive the Louise Weiss prize, “for her tireless action in favour of Europe and peace”. In Parliament, other representatives imposed themselves through their presence and their work on specific issues: the Italian Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi (1922-2007), the Belgians Anne-Marie Lizin (1949-2015) and Antoinette Spaak (born in 1928), the German Magdalene Hoff (born in 1940), the French woman Nicole Péry (born in 1943), and the Dutch woman Hanja Maij-Weggen (born in 1943), among others. A number of them learned their “trade” as European representatives with Fausta Deshormes La Valle (1927-2013), who was the head of the “Women’s Information Service” of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Information, which in 1976 launched the review
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