On Wednesday 3 March, the European Commission presented the EU’s new 10-year strategy on the rights of people with disabilities: a roadmap without binding targets, but promising some concrete initiatives.
These include the creation of a European disability card. A Commission proposal to this effect will be presented by the end of 2023.
Such a card should make it possible to limit the barriers that people with disabilities face in accessing certain services when they travel abroad and their status is not necessarily recognised.
“Persons with disabilities have the same right as other EU citizens to move to another country”, the Commission insists. Its proposal will build on the experience gained from a European disability card pilot project, which has been running since February 2016 in Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Malta, Romania and Slovenia.
Also with a view to ensuring that people with disabilities fully enjoy their rights as European citizens, the Commission will publish guidelines in 2023 on their participation in the electoral process - as candidates and voters.
“In practice, persons with disabilities often face difficulties in exercising their rights due to limited accessibility (including a lack of information and communication in sign language) or due to restrictions in their legal capacity”, the strategy details.
Autonomy and inclusion
Recommendations to ensure that people with disabilities are no longer excluded and can “live independently and choose where and with whom they want to live” are also announced for 2023. A framework for the provision of social services to people with disabilities will also be presented by 2024.
In addition, a package of measures concerning the integration of people with disabilities into the labour market will be launched in 2022. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, almost 51% of them are employed, compared to 75% of able-bodied people.
“Mandatory quotas for more diversity in companies and more support and training for employees and decision-makers is the right way to make companies fit for employing persons with disabilities and offering easily accessible jobs”, said Katrin Langensiepen MEP (Greens/EFA, Germany), who works in the Parliament on the issue of equal treatment of people with disabilities in employment.
“We call for more investment in social enterprises where people with disabilities work as employees, with full social protection and at a decent salary together with persons without disabilities”, she added.
Missed opportunities
Finally, at the institutional level, the Commission promises to renew its human resources strategy to promote diversity and the integration of people with disabilities.
In 2022, it will also launch a European resource centre. Called AccessibleEU, this centre will provide a framework for cooperation between national authorities responsible for implementing accessibility rules and experts: a framework for sharing good practice for policy development.
For the European Disability Forum (EDF), this is a positive initiative, but “it falls short however of the potential that a new EU agency on accessibility could have had”.
However, the organisation hopes to become involved in the Disability Platform, which will be created in 2021 to replace the Disability High Level Group.
Finally, it regrets that its request to set up a unit responsible for the coordination, at European level, of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has not been successful.
“Without strengthened human and financial resources within the Commission, or the establishment of a strong and influential CRPD focal point, it is hard to see how” the Commission’s commitment to mainstream disability in all areas of EU action will be honoured, notes the EDF.
To consult the strategy: https://bit.ly/3kOpyz9 (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)