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United Nations recommendations to the EU

The European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD) welcomes the United Nations’s final recommendations to the European Union on how to take further steps in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). EASPD shares the UN concern on the need to establish guidelines with concrete benchmarks and indicators to assess the European Disability Strategy but warns of the danger of neglecting support services for critical issues such as independent living, employment or education.

This week the United Nations (UN) has published its final recommendations to the EU on the progress made towards ensuring compliance with the CRPD. The UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has shown its concerns with regard to the lack of a cross-cutting, comprehensive disability approach in EU legislation; recommending doing a full harmonisation with the provisions of the Convention. EASPD did its own assessment on the UN CRPD’s implementation stressing the needs in the sector from the perspective of support services. Several UN recommendations are consistent with the issues that EASPD has already announced:

1. The European Disability Strategy (EDS). The UN recommends the EU to conduct a mid-term assessment of the EDS in cooperation with key stakeholders to establish clear guidelines and concrete benchmarks. EASPD considers essential to involve support services in the assessment and to develop a second work plan of the EDS with a stronger social investment dimension to facilitate the provision of high quality support services.
2. Structured dialogue. EASPD supports the recommendation to set up a real Structured Dialogue with an independent budget line and calls on the EU to also involve representatives from the support services sector. Furthermore, EASPD encourages the EU to use the European Semester as a tool to speed up the implementation of the Convention at national level, whilst increasing the participation of civil society organisations and social partners.
3. Living independently and being included in the community. EASPD agrees on the need to foster deinstitutionalisation by strengthening the monitoring of the use of European Structural and Investment Funds and recommends the EU to deliver a specific Communication on this issue and provide structural support to the European Expert Group on the transition from institutional to community-based care.
4. Education. EASPD supports the inclusion of disability –specific indicators in the Europe 2020 strategy and recommends the EU to strengthen the mandate of the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education.
5. Work and employment. The UN recommends providing training for Member States on reasonable accommodation and accessibility in the context of employment to increase the rate of persons with disabilities employed in the open labour market. EASPD agrees and defends the setting-up of a supported employment agency for EU institutions that could provide guidance to Member States.
6. Monitoring of the CRPD’s implementation. The UN also recommends that the EU should be removed from the independent body that monitors the implementation of the Convention – called “independent monitoring framework” to comply with the Paris principles. EASPD has stressed several times that this monitoring framework does not currently represent a pluralistic participation of different civil society organisations and therefore calls on the EU to extend its composition.

The EU has four years to take measures in line with these recommendations and will have to submit its next progress report by January 2019.

Full article.