European Parliament’s Disability Intergroup
The re-establishment of the intergroup is now confirmed (not all outgoing intergroups were so lucky). 67 MEPs have joined so far, and some 40 other MEPs support it.
EU Disability Strategy post-2020
During the conference “Towards Inclusion 2020”, European Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli confirmed that there will be a new strategy for the next decade This commitment is also included in the European Commission Communication of 14 January 2020, “A strong social Europe for just transitions”. The European Parliament’s EMPL Committee (Employment and Social Affairs) has started to debate a draft resolution on the EU disability strategy post 2020. Points 6, 8 and 12 of the draft resolution reflect our demands in our Statement on European Elections 2019 concerning respectively the collection of statistics, EU funding and the Equal Treatment Directive.
EU Disability Card
We contributed by way of comments to an EDF analysis and draft report on this initiative, namely to stress that in order to avoid continued disappointment of the concerned citizens with what the EU effectively delivers, there needs to be a marked scaling-up of the Card in the coming years, both in geographical and objective scope.
Miscellaneous :
- Web Accessibility Directive: a Eur-Lex page now gives access to national transposition measures.
- On 14 January, EBU responded to a Fundamental Rights Agency anonymous survey, on difficulties of civil societies organisations in their activities in the EU. We used this opportunity to tell the difficulties we experience with consultations: short deadlines for meaningful input, accessibility of questionnaires.
- EBU participated in the EU Strategic Dialogue Meeting of 24 January on the European Semester, organised by DG EMPL of the European Commission, focusing on the situation of the employment market for visually impaired persons. We presented the recent ONCE report on the matter, and also used that opportunity to repeat our demand for reliable EU-level statistics on disability. At that same meeting we learned the following:
- After a period of consultation of civil society organisations throughout 2020, the Commission will present an action plan to implement the European Pilar of Social Rights;
- The European Disability Strategy for the next decade should be adopted in 2021;
The UN Sustainable Development Goals will be integrated in the European Semester, i.e. be mainstreamed in EU policy-making.