159th CoR Plenary Session (31 January - 1 February 2024)

The EU and its Member States have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and use its definition of disability as a common reference at EU level. There is no other harmonised definition of disability in the EU. The EU combats all forms of discrimination alongside and in support of its Member States . To improve the situation of people with disabilities, it has introduced a series of initiatives, programmes and strategies over a number of decades.

Moving freely in the EU will become easier for people with disabilities. A European disability card and a parking card will ease access to their rights and to preferential conditions in all EU countries.

This Final Report is the final deliverable of the request for service EMPL/2020/OP/0016 to provide a "Study supporting the Impact assessment of an EU initiative introducing the European Disability Card". The study was carried out by Ernst & Young (EY), Valdani, Vicari & Associati (VVA), Open Evidence and FBK-IRVAPP on behalf of the European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL).

The IA supporting the proposal for a European disability card and a European parking card builds on the experience of two instruments already in place: i) the EU disability card pilot project rolled out in eight participating Member States since 2016, and ii) the EU parking card for persons with disabilities, introduced EU-wide in 1998 through Council Recommendation 98/376/EC. The IA draws on a wide range of data, including a supporting study (which, however, is not linked and does not seem to have been published) and a recent study assessing the implementation of the disability card pilot project. The IA presents a clear and comprehensive intervention logic. It puts forward two policy options in addition to the baseline scenario, duly analysing the potential impacts, with a focus on social, fundamental rights and economic impacts.

This briefing provides a pre-legislative synthesis of the positions of national, regional and local governmental organisations on the European Commission's forthcoming proposal on the European Disability Card. It forms part of an EPRS series offering a summary of the pre-legislative state of play and advance consultation on a range of key European Commission priorities during its 5-year term in office. It seeks to present the current state of affairs, to examine how existing policy is working on the ground, and to identify best practice and ideas for the future on the part of governmental organisations at all levels of the European system of multi-level governance

This article discusses the role of soft law in advancing the rights of persons with disabilities in the European Union (EU). In doing so, it revisits the emergence of the standalone, yet cross-cutting, field of ‘EU disability law’ through the lens of the ‘hybridity theory’ advanced inter alia by Trubek and Trubek.

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the Committee on Petitions, examines the progress made on mutual recognition of disability status in the EU and the challenges this presents. There are different definitions and practices of disability assessment among the Member States and in different policy fields. Citizens’ petitions raise concerns about the lack of mutual recognition and call for improvements. Harmonising assessment is difficult but common entry points are possible. The EU Disability Card provides an administrative model for mutual recognition.

EU lawmakers agreed on Thursday 11 January on their position for the first EU-wide Disability Card that aims to guarantee a minimum standard of support for persons with disabilities across Europe.