The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) published, on Monday 5 May, its updated assessment of EU disability policies. Conducted by Janina Arsenjeva as part of the European Disability Expertise (EDE), this analysis examines the compliance of European instruments with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
The EDE, whose aim is to provide advice to the Commission’s ‘Disability Inclusion’ Unit, has examined the European Union’s laws and policies relating to persons with disabilities, and in particular the instruments adopted after the EU concluded the UNCRPD in 2010, as many non-binding instruments are rapidly becoming obsolete.
The assessment reveals a certain complexity in the EU’s competences, which are divided between exclusive, shared and supporting competences, in accordance with Articles 2 to 6 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU).
In addition, the report, which is part of the EU Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030, shows that the majority of the instruments adopted fall under shared competences and have Article 114 of the TFEU on the internal market as their basic reference, as in the case of the EU Web Accessibility Directive and the European Accessibility Act.
Article 19 TFEU, which forms the legal basis for EU action against discrimination on the grounds of disability, has only once been used to adopt a legislative act explicitly concerning persons with disabilities, and that was the Employment Equality Directive (2000).
Finally, the analysis points to a lack of explicit references to the UNCRPD in several major texts, particularly in the field of consumer affairs. The text calls for the cross-sectoral role of disability to be strengthened in the development of all European policies.
To see the report: https://aeur.eu/f/goz (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)