We were busy with the preparation of the agenda and documents for the meeting of the EBU Commission for Liaising with the EU (“LC”), in Brussels on 18-19 November. The documents include background notes and, for adoption by the LC, the draft recommendations for the accessibility of payment terminals prepared by the ad hoc task-group. These documents were circulated well ahead of the meeting.
On 3 October we attended the EU Disability Forum’s meeting of the subgroup on the EU’s Disability Employment Package. We contributed comments there to the final versions of the Catalogue of positive actions aimed at hiring of persons with disabilities and combating stereotypes, and to the Guidelines on reasonable accommodation at work. We remain perplex of the Commission’s top-down approach in these initiatives, where the role of civil society organisations, more than providing input, seems to be essentially to raise the visibility of the Commission’s initiatives. For instance, we remain in the dark as to what extent our own guidance on reasonable accommodation will fit in the Forum’s output, although it is presented as a “knowledge hub”.
On 13 October, at the Disability Forum’s plenary meeting, we learned about the Spanish EU Presidency’s plans on disability, including a conference on 16 November which will address the European Disability Card, electoral rights, and the rights of women and girls with disabilities (namely with regard to forced sterilisation)—Ana Pelaez having been invited to speak to this in her capacity as Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Civil society organisations—including EBU—expressed concern about not having received invitations yet, only a month ahead of the event. The future Belgian presidency announced three conferences: on minimum income on 18-19 January 2024; on digital inclusion on 12-15 March; and their main disability event on 19 March to address the following three issues: linking national and EU disability strategies; the right of free movement of persons with disabilities; and access to employment.
At the Disability Platform’s plenary, we were informed by the Commission that the AccessibleEU resource centre has now opened their website. To-date, we remain uncertain how concretely EBU can connect to AccessibleEU, while recognising the potential that this initiative has.
The Disability Forum’s plenary meeting also gave us the opportunity to question:
The representatives of DG NEAR of the Commission and of the European External Action Service about what they were doing to promote the Marrakesh Treaty in wider Europe through the EU’s neighbourhood policy; and
The representative of DG ESTAT about progress toward providing data on disability, disaggregated not only by level of disability, but also by type of disability.
On 16 October, we were interviewed by researchers from Maynooth University (Ireland) and ALL Institute (assisting living and learning) on the EBU’s action for access to culture and our views on the EU’s performance in this area, as part of an European Research Council (ERC) funded project. We are monitoring the announcement of an upcoming European Commission public consultation for the evaluation of Creative Europe programme, as an opportunity to put once more our message across that the mid-term review of the programme for 2021-2027 should be used to introduce benchmarking on social inclusion objectives, in particular as regards the promotion of audio description and audio subtitling in European films receiving MEDIA funding.
On 18 October we attended a meeting of the Party of European Socialist (PES) with civil society organisations, which allowed us to stress our key asks for the European Parliament elections of June 2024. This invitation followed up from their solicitation of April 2023 and our subsequent sending to all EU level political parties of our statement on the elections. Pressed to indicate three priorities, we particularly highlighted accessibility of elections (as it also relates to democracy), filling the gaps of the European Accessibility Act (household appliances, labelling of food products, and the built environment—the latter relating to the green transition), and using the lever of EU funding to promote accessibility, namely of films through Creative Europe/MEDIA.
On 19 October, after more in-depth analysis of the text and concertation with EDF and other EU-level disability organisations, we published a proper position paper on the European Commission’s proposed directive establishing the European Disability Card and the European Parking Card for persons with disabilities. We sent this document to the European Commission’s competent unit and to the key actors at the European Parliament and the EU Council. We also invited our members in the EU to send the EBU position to their MEPs in the European parliament’s lead committee, as well as to their ministries of social affairs and/or permanent representations to the EU. Again, we were invited to contribute an op-ed for the specialised and influential EU magazine Social Europe, as a follow-up to previous articles. Through their participation in the next edition of the EBU podcast, we pushed the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) to take interest in the European Disability Card initiative as our natural ally from the perspective of fighting for the lifting of remaining barriers to the free movement of people in the EU. We know that the Council of the EU aims to adopt its General Approach (i.e., negotiating position with the European Parliament) in November, which leaves us optimistic about the possibility that the directive will be adopted before the European elections.