BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said on Thursday it would back efforts to financially support women seeking access to abortions, after a multiyear campaign by more than a million citizens across the 27-nation bloc to expand support for women in nations with conservative laws.

Hadja Lahbib, European Commissioner for Equality, said on Thursday that the EU’s 147 billion euro European Social Funds Plus can be used by EU nations to treat and defray costs of an abortion for women regardless of where they come from within the bloc.

“Nearly half a million unsafe abortions take place in Europe every year,” Lahbib said. “Safety and freedom must never depend on your postcode or your income.”

She praised the My Voice, My Choice campaign, saying organizers had brought her boxes full of letters from women across the bloc.

The initiative had called for the EU to set up a separate fund for women to travel outside their home nations to secure safe abortions. And while the commission did not do that, organizers said the decision achieves their aims by other means.

“While no new legal instrument is being created, the Commission has formally acknowledged that the core objectives of our initiative can be achieved and outlined a concrete pathway to implement it in practice,” said Nika Kovač, coordinator of the My Voice, My Choice initiative. “This is not symbolic. It is a political commitment to women’s rights.”

“It establishes beyond doubt that access to safe abortion is a matter of public health and social justice,” Kovač said. “For the first time, the Commission confirms unequivocally that EU funds can be used to guarantee access to safe abortion care ー particularly for women in vulnerable situations, regardless of where they come from in Europe.”

Abortions are legal in much of Europe. France, for instance, enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution in 2024. But abortions are tightly restricted in Poland, Malta, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, according to the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual & Reproductive Rights.

The commission was prompted to take a position on the initiative by a unique EU protocol called the European Citizens’ Initiative. Public campaigns launched via an official website must receive more than a million signatures spread out across the bloc to prompt official deliberation by the EU executive in Brussels.

After campaigners received more than a million votes starting in 2024, European lawmakers had voted in favor of the funding 358-202 with 79 abstentions in December.

Opponents of the initiative said it would force EU majority opinion on nations that had chosen more conservative laws.

“How can I explain to my people, the Maltese, that what they decided for, we overturn it here?” said Maltese lawmaker Peter Agius, during a discussion about the initiative in European Parliament in December. He votes with the European People’s Party, the same political coalition as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Today is a good day for women’s rights in Europe,” Kovač said. “Today we won, today we will celebrate, and tomorrow we will start working more.”