That continental touch

As we choose the people to represent us in the EU Parliament, Andy Rickell reflects on how Europe has led the way in establishing rights for disabled people

Turnout in European elections is traditionally low and the level of interest in what goes on in Strasbourg and Brussels even lower. However the EU is useful in advancing disabled people’s rights in the UK.

The major change recently has been the EU Employment Directive. Sounds boring, but this was the legislation passed by the EU which required the UK to take account of discrimination in employment on grounds of age, religion and sexual orientation, as well as race, gender and disability. The UK chose to create the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Whilst disabled people lost our Disability Rights Commission, we gained a recognition that disability had a rightful place alongside all other equality and human rights issues. Soon we will also get a new single equalities law which will again recognise disability.

Recently a further key step was taken. Years ago when I was Chief Executive of BCODP, then Britain’s leading organisation of disabled people, the European Disability Forum was touting the idea of a specific EU disability directive – basically a Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) for the whole of the EU, which would trump the UK’s DDA and help to deal with its weaknesses. As BCODP was struggling to get progress on improving the DDA as we wanted, this was a good opportunity to bypass the Westminster government. Some Members of the European Parliament supported this law, but that itself was not enough.

Then the European Disability Forum orchestrated a mass European-wide petition in support of such a law. The EU rules are such that if one million people petition for something, they have to look at it. I and many other activists and ordinary people signed this petition, and the target was achieved.

At the beginning of April, the European Parliament voted on introducing this new EU law which would cover discrimination relating to access to goods and services, and it was passed. Next it must be agreed by the Council of Ministers before it becomes EU law and it will then apply in the UK.

This EU law may correct some of the DDA’s weaknesses, like the ludicrous definition of disability, and the difficulty of enforcing your rights under the goods and services section.

The EU law would use the same definition for disability as the UN Convention – based on the social model – which concentrates on acts of discrimination and not a person’s impairment. This would be good.

Indeed, already the UK Government has been thinking about how this will affect the definition in the UK’s single equality legislation.

The bottom line is that the EU is useful in pushing the equality and rights agenda for disabled people in the UK.