{"id":1971,"date":"2025-06-26T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T13:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/press-statement\/mep-awards-nela-riehl-named-best-newcomer\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T15:33:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T13:33:41","slug":"mep-awards-nela-riehl-named-best-newcomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/press-statement\/mep-awards-nela-riehl-named-best-newcomer\/","title":{"rendered":"MEP Awards: Nela Riehl named best Newcomer!"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Member of the European Parliament Nela Riehl (Volt) has been honoured with the prestigious MEP Award. At the ceremony in Brussels, she won in the category \u201cBest Newcomer in Parliament.\u201d One year after entering the European Parliament\u2014where she is part of the Greens\/EFA group and serves as Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education\u2014the award marks an important recognition for the MEP. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>

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\u201cIt\u2019s great to receive this recognition for my work,\u201d said Riehl. \u201cBecause it shows that it is being seen\u2014both inside and outside the European Parliament. I came to Brussels as a career changer and jumped straight into the job. At the same time, I bring a fresh perspective\u2014just last spring I was still a teacher in Hamburg, and now I\u2019m chairing the important education committee in Brussels, where I can directly bring in my experience from outside. That\u2019s exactly what this award recognises\u2014a great confirmation that commitment in politics pays off!\u201d <\/span> <\/span><\/p>

Riehl emphasised that she also sees the award as recognition for her entire team. \u201cAs a party, we grew enormously in the European elections and had to build a completely new structure in Brussels. Today, we have a real delegation with motivated people from all over Europe who fight for our political vision every day. Without my team, none of this would work\u2014so this recognition belongs to all of us. But we don\u2019t do politics to win awards\u2014we do it to create real change.\u201d <\/span> <\/span><\/p>

At the same time, the European politician believes the award sends an important signal beyond the Parliament itself. \u201cI\u2019ve received many congratulations and messages from people who now feel more seen\u2014especially people of colour and women who are politically active. I, too, am still something of a political statement in the European Parliament: one of only four Black Members out of a total of 720. The group photo from the award ceremony also speaks volumes: there are more Thomases on stage than women. We need to work for greater diversity in politics every single day\u2014because we are all Europe!\u201d <\/span> <\/span><\/p>

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The MEP Awards are presented annually by The Parliament magazine in eight categories. Alongside Riehl, Dutch Volt MEP Reinier van Lanschot was also nominated this year. <\/span> <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Member of the European Parliament Nela Riehl (Volt) has been honoured with the prestigious MEP Awards. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-statement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nelariehl.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}