Creative Europe/MEDIA
As EU interinstitutional negotiations on the regulation for this programme for 2021-2027 are about to resume, we are preparing to communicate around our position paper.
The European Parliament rapporteur has expressed support for our demands in our recent Focus newsletter. He informed us of a strong will, from the EP side, to have the programme ready for 1st January 2021, without downward compromise on crucial points.
Marrakesh Treaty
The UK has joined the Treaty on its own rights. The Treaty will continue to be applicable there after end of post-Brexit transition period, without a gap in time.
We are looking into the application of the Treaty in non-EU European Economic Area countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway). The relevant instruments of EU law need to be incorporated into the EEA agreement through an EEA Joint Committee decision, and this is taking more time than usual.
Our member in Bosnia-Herzegovina informs us that their country is now making quick progress toward ratification of the Treaty, more on this in a seperate article.
Accessible lifts
We submitted written recommendations to CEN/TC 10/WG 7, the EU standardisation body’s working group that is revising the accessible lifts standard, and to ANEC, ahead of its meeting of 7 October.
We were not invited to this particular meeting, despite it being the direct continuation of the July meeting. We made it fully clear that we nevertheless relied on ANEC to voice our recommendations, as always.
It was agreed at this meeting to first concentrate on finalising the contrast issue, and only after address other issues (the full extent of which is still being discussed).
Equality in employment
We took an active part in communication in support of MEP Katrin Langensiepen’s report for the European Parliament on the implementation of the Employment Equality Directive in light of the UNCRPD, around its publication and presentation to the EMPL committee of the EP. We also promoted the content of this report in the context of European Commission consultations for the future European Disability Strategy (see below).
Consultations by the European Commission
We participated in the following consultation meetings:
- Strategic Dialogue meetings: "Launching the 2021 European Semester" (19 October) and "Consultation on the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan" (21 October)
- Consultations by Commissioner Dalli’s cabinet for the new European Disability Strategy – the first 2 of a series of 4 meetings, on: Mobility, accessibility and participation (22 October) and Employment, skills, social protection, social services and independent living (23 October). The outcomes will feed into a later joint meeting with Commissioner Dalli on 11 November. We will give our members in the EU an overall report in November.
We responded to the online consultation on the evaluation of Regulation (EC) N° 1107/2006 concerning the rights of disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility when travelling by air. See our response, in which incidentally we complain about the lack accessibility of the consultation process for BPS persons.
We called on our national member organisations to participate in this consultation and to circulate it widely, as well as in the ones also on passenger rights respectively in transport by coach and in waterway transport.
As a result of our pressure jointly with EDF, we obtained from the Commission an extension of deadlines and Word versions of the questionnaires in accessible format in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. We will be increasingly vocal on the matter of accessibility of online consultations in the future, especially where PWDs are particularly concerned by the topic; and in fact we have raised this point again in the consultation about the European Disability Strategy (see below).
Events
- We participated in the EU Disability High Level Group (15 October) in which the German and Portuguese Presidencies presented their programmes, and the current and future European Disability Strategies were discussed.
- We participated in seminar on the European Accessibility Act organised by the Federation of European Publishers and the International Publishing Association at the Frankfurt Book Fair (16 October). We were represented by Prof. Thomas Kahlisch (DBSV and dzb lessen) who highlighted the opportunities for all of the EAA as regards e-books.