Promoting the social integration of persons with disabilities and persons with changed working capacity

Social rights
Disability
Labour market

Background

According to the European Commission report entitled "European comparative data on Europe 2020 and persons with disabilities", around 51.3% of persons with disabilities are employed across Europe, compared to 75.6% of those without disabilities, while around 22 million persons with disabilities (aged between 20 and 64 years) are employed, out of a total of 42.8 million persons with disabilities from the same age group. Report findings also show that the degree of disability is inversely related to the activity rate and that the risk of financial poverty increases with the degree of disability.

In 2022 the Commission published the Disability Employment Package, to improve the integration of persons with disabilities into the labour market. Among others, the package highlights how persons with disabilities tend to work in alternative employment models, with the most common alternative form of employment for persons with disabilities being "sheltered employment" or "sheltered workshops".

This EESC opinion focuses on ways to help persons with disabilities enter the open labour market and better implement the aims highlighted in the Disability Employment Package. It focuses on two topics: the social integration, complex rehabilitation and occupational rehabilitation of persons with disabilities and changed working capacity; and launching EU-level reflection around the need for reasonable accommodation.

This topic is fully in line with the priorities of the Hungarian Presidency in the social field, since this issue will be explored both through Council conclusions and during high level events. The exploratory opinion on this topic provides synergies with activities planned during the Hungarian Presidency and with the overarching presidency priority (addressing demographic challenges).

 

Key points

The EESC:

  • regrets that exclusion from the labour market is still a widespread issue, especially affecting women with disabilities and people with the most severe disabilities and believes that solutions such as  sheltered employment  often end up perpetrating segregation;
  • urges Member States to promote policies and measures that strengthen access to the open labour market and the Commission to implement the related policy actions under the Disability Employment Package;
  • calls on the Member States to step up the employment of persons with disabilities, for example through a joint fund for reasonable accommodation. Such fund would be financed by private and public employers who fall short of any set quotas;
  • considers that any incentives related to State aid should be conditional on respect for workers’ rights and in line with the CRPD, the CRPD Committee and the EU Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
  • calls for the positive employment measures to include incentives for entrepreneurship among persons with disabilities, both individually and collectively;
  • advocates uniformity and coherence when it comes to establishing the rules for and implementing reasonable accommodation, and would like to see dissemination of the guide Reasonable accommodation at work – Guidance and good practice, which can help raise awareness and increase skills in this area;
  • stresses the need to establish standards to identify and compare models and services implemented by national public employment services (PES) through benchmarking in order to identify good practices based on actual data and to promote mutual learning;
  • calls for quantitative and qualitative data to be collected specifically with regard to sheltered employment, in order to get a picture of the phenomenon and the trends;
  • draws attention to the fact that advances in technology and AI can make it easier for persons with disabilities to participate in the open market; it calls for policies aimed at making these advances more widely known and at promoting their potential, accessibility and affordability to be supported.

The text of the draft opinion can be found here.

 

Additional information

Section: Employment, Social Affairs and Citizenship (SOC)

Opinion number: SOC/807

Opinion type: Exploratory

Rapporteur: Pietro Vittorio Barbieri

Date of adoption by section: 3/9/2024

Result of the vote: 86 in favour/0 against/2 abstentions

Date of adoption in plenary: 18/09/2024 – 19/09/2024

Result of the vote:   in favour/ against/ abstentions

 

Contacts

Press officer: Leonard Mallett

Tel.: 00 32 2 546 93 37

Email: Leonard.Mallett@eesc.europa.eu  

 

Administrator: Valeria Atzori

Tel.: +32 2 546 87 74

Email: Valeria.Atzori@eesc.europa.eu