On Wednesday 6 May, the European Commission presented a communication aimed at strengthening the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030. There are 90 million persons with disabilities in the EU, or more than one in five Europeans. One in three persons with a disability is at risk of poverty, almost double the EU average.
“There are three points of attention that were raised (during a public consultation launched by the European Commission): inclusiveness in society, which also includes the labour market, accessibility and autonomy”, European Commissioner Hadja Lahbib explained to Agence Europe on Tuesday 5 May.
Employment. Aware that only 55% of persons with disabilities have a job (compared with 77% of persons without disabilities), the Commission wants to improve the implementation of the March 2021 ‘Employment of Persons with Disabilities’ package. It will be consulting the European social partners on possible directions for EU action to support the professional integration of persons excluded from the labour market.
Education. According to Hadja Lahbib, to integrate persons with disabilities into the job market, we also need to work on education. “We’re going to start very early with incentives for all early childhood services to detect, act on and really support disabled persons as quickly as possible”, she explained. “And therefore to implement the right strategies as quickly as possible to enable the child to develop, to blossom as much as possible and to integrate into the workplace”.
Autonomy. The European Commission is also set to launch an Alliance for Independent Living to replace institutions with community support. 1.4 million persons with disabilities live in institutions. “Persons with disabilities no longer want to live in institutions. It’s a question of dignity, of autonomy, of having the choice to live where you want, with whom you want and how you want”, emphasised Ms Lahbib. The Commission will therefore “support what are known as service-based communities. Promote adapted housing, with a range of services to enable persons with disabilities - including the elderly - to live as independently as possible for as long as possible”.
Accessibility. The European Commission wants to digitalise the European disability and parking cards for persons with disabilities throughout the EU. In concrete terms, it plans to create QR codes for the physical versions of the cards, security features to prevent fraud and interoperability to enable them to be read in all Member States. Communication campaigns to raise awareness of the benefits of these cards will also be carried out, as will an assessment of the remaining obstacles to the free movement of persons with disabilities.
Accessibility in all modes of transport is another priority. In particular, the Commission is calling on EU Member States to provide training on accessibility to relevant professionals in the fields of construction, transport, public procurement services and information and communication technologies.
The use of assistive technologies, such as artificial intelligence tools, is also highlighted. The aim is to identify and remove the barriers that prevent disabled persons from benefiting from accessible and affordable technologies.
An EU-level dialogue with assistive technology operators, involving users and public administrations, presenting relevant EU business support initiatives and identifying funding opportunities to facilitate the transition from the laboratory to the market, will be launched. The same will apply to a study aimed at assessing the barriers to assistive technologies and AI for persons with disabilities and formulating proposals for overcoming them.
The Commission will also be working with the Member States to make it easier for persons with disabilities to take part in the electoral process, for example by providing them with adapted voting equipment.
Finally, it will work to make crisis preparedness and management more inclusive of people with disabilities, including a gap analysis, training programmes for first responders and the award of a Civil Protection Medal at the Civil Protection Forum in 2026 for ‘extraordinary contribution to the EU Civil Protection Mechanism in the field of disability inclusion’.
To see the communication: https://aeur.eu/f/ltf (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)