Helga Stevens

Member of the European Parliament (2014-2019)

When Helga Stevens was ten months old, her parents discovered that she was deaf. This did not prevent her from successfully making the transition to regular education when she was ten.

The first deaf lawyer in Belgium
Following a meeting with a deaf lawyer during her year as an exchange student in the US, Helga Stevens decided to study law. She was the first deaf person in Belgium to obtain a master’s degree in law, followed by a Master of Laws at the University of California.

When she returned from the US, Helga started work at a Brussels law firm. She then moved to the European Union of the Deaf (EUD), of which she became director and president.

First deaf politician in the Flemish Parliament
Helga Stevens entered politics in the Senate elections of 1999. In the years that followed, she was active on basically all political levels. During the federal elections in 2010, she ended up as the tenth most popular politician in Flanders.