Meeting of the High-Level Group on Disability

octubre 15, 2020

Comisión Europea, Estrategia europea de derechos de los discapacitados 2021-2030, Pilar Europeo de Derechos Sociales y Semestre Europeo

En el 15^th of October EUD attended the High-Level Group on Disability meeting organised by the European Commission. During the meeting the German and Portuguese Presidencies presented their work programmes and explained their priorities. Later, the discussion about the current and future European Disability Strategy took place.

The European Commission presented the state of play of the evaluation of the European Disability Strategy (EDS) 2010-2020 and explained how the Commission is preparing for the new post 2020 European Disability Strategy. Afterwards, the participants had a chance to present their ideas and priorities during the discussion. EUD took an opportunity to highlight that when ensuring accessibility in the EU, not enough attention is paid for people with non-visible disabilities and their perspectives to accessibility. For deaf people accessibility means accessibility through national sign languages. The next EU Disability Strategy should pay more attention to ensuring accessibility through national EU sign languages for deaf Europeans as the EU is the union of multilingualism.

EUD reminds that we evaluated the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 in great detail and proposed the recommendations for the future post-2020 Strategy. EUD’s evaluation and recommendations were communicated to the European Commission ensuring that the deaf perspective is taken into account when delivering post-2020 EDS.