Birgitta Rosén-Gustafsson, President of CPLOL :

Time has come to close this session of the celebration.

First of all I would like to thank all the speakers and participants who made contribution to this event. A special thank to the former presidents, Jacques Roustit, Ben Mondelaers, Linda Schrey-Dern. We are grateful that you all had the possibility to come and celebrate with us. You are the link to CPLOL’s history, important not to forget.

A great thank and appreciation to our honored guests, who have spent the Saturday morning here with us.

A very special thank to FNO, Jean Marc Kremer, Nicole Denni-Krichel and many others, who made this occasion possible, to celebrate here in the European Parliament. Without your work it could not have been possible. Thank you so much.

Thank you to all CPLOL delegates, who come together twice a year, discussing and working with a lot of projects, in addition to your daily work at home.

Also thanks to the whole EC, with whom I communicate almost every day…

Communication is one of the most fundamental abilities. It helps us get in contact with people, it is needed to describe our basic needs, our ideas, our thoughts, helping us to understand each other. To most of the population this is taken for granted, as they are not aware of the complex brain functions that govern these processes, i.e. how complex the system must be for a person to be able to speak and/or understand.

We will soon continue the celebration in a more, maybe, relaxed way. First a few words about the visions of the future. In 20 years, when we celebrate 40 years – how will we summarize the development then?

A goal to strive towards would be that all speech and language therapists in Europe have an equal education at University Masters level. We would have a European certificate to ensure high quality treatment of the patients. We have to continue informing people that disabilities are not only problems with motor skills, for people sitting in wheel chairs. It is usually an even harder disability not to be able to speak, sitting in silence, excluded from society! All thousands of persons who cannot communicate deserve our help and support, to make their daily life worth living. Imagine if we had managed this in the coming 20 years…

The importance of oral and written communication have increased in society, which means our patient groups risk to be excluded. Speech and language therapists, WE, can bridge the gap. As a comparison: If you have problems to see you need glasses, if you have diabetes you need insulin AND my wish is that people took for granted that IF you have a communication disorder you SHOULD have the right to get an assessment, treatment and/or compensatory aid.

For the coming 20 years my wish is:

First of all, to have all countries in the European Union members of CPLOL (we still miss Romania, Lithuania and Hungary)

Create contacts with the decision takers in the European Union, to let CPLOL have the right to speak/decide/advice about decisions that influences our patient groups.

Increase the number of speech and language therapists to cover the needs for all the thousands who suffer from silence and to prevent speech and language difficulties in children.

Develop the training to have all SLTs at a Masters level at University.

Create a European certificate for SLTs to ensure consistent high quality treatment of the patient.

Increase the research all over Europe to get an even higher quality of clinical evidence-based work.

We have achieved a lot during the past 20 years. Let us be proud of that while keeping up the CPLOL spirit to continue the process now and in the future.

And with these words I would like to say: Happy Birthday CPLOL!