27 Amendments of Massimiliano SMERIGLIO related to 2022/2026(INI)
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 1 – point 1 (new)
(1) Calls on the Member States to carry out national disability awareness- raising campaigns promoting the CRPD and the European Disability Strategy 2021-2030 that area accessible for all and involve PwD and the family members and organisations that represent them; calls on the Member States to adopt ambitious timelines for the implementation of the strategy; calls on the Commission to develop a set of detailed indicators in the forthcoming delegated act on the revised social score board to measure the progress toward the goals and objectives of the strategy and to ensure compliance by all those involved with the commitments outlined in these documents;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 1 – point 2 (new)
(2) Takes note of the progress made by the Member States in effectively implementing and monitoring the CRPD and in adapting accessibility measures to comply with the standards of the CRPD; calls on the Member States to designate, without further delay, responsible authorities to serve as focal points, and to establish coordinating mechanisms at all administrative levels, in accordance with Article 33 of the CRPD, for its implementation and monitoring; stresses that the Member States should ensure that a significant number of persons with disabilities are involved in the work of these authorities;
Amendment 25 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 2 – point 1 (new)
(1) Considers the Optional Protocol to be an indivisible part of the CRPD; points to the fact that the Optional Protocol provides citizens with a forum to communicate alleged violations of the provisions of the convention by a State Party, and allows the CRPD Committee to initiate confidential inquiries when they receive information indicating that a State Party has committed a grave or systematic violation;
Amendment 26 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 2 – point 2 (new)
(2) Stresses that the Optional Protocol to the CRPD has not been ratified by the EU and five Member States; calls on all Member States that have not yet ratified the Optional Protocol to the CRPD to do so without further delay, and for the EU to fully ratify it; calls on the Council to take the necessary steps to ensure the accession of the EU to the Optional Protocol;
Amendment 27 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 – point 3 (new)
Paragraph 2 – point 3 (new)
(3) Notes that there is no mutual recognition of disability status between Member States; calls on the Member States to work together in a spirit of mutual trust to recognise the status assigned in another Member State; emphasises the Commission’s goal of working with Member States to expand the scope of the mutual recognition of disability status in areas such as labour mobility and the benefits related to the conditions of service provision; highlights the need to extend the benefits of the EU disability card so that mutually recognised health access benefits are also included; underlines, in this context, the importance of swift action in terms of implementation of the European Disability Card; reiterates the need for mutual understanding of deinstitutionalisation, its implementation and independent living in the community, with a view to better aligning the Member States’ strategies and the EU funds with the CRPD;
Amendment 28 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 – point 4 (new)
Paragraph 2 – point 4 (new)
(4) Welcomes the Commission’s initiative, by the end of 2023, for the creation of an EU disability card to be recognised in all Member States, with a view to scaling up the pilot projects for the EU disability card and the EU parking card for PwD; is of the opinion that the EU disability card, which should be adopted and recognised in all Member States, and cover all areas of life, including transport, will be an important instrument to help PwD to exercise their right to free movement in a barrier-free EU;
Amendment 29 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 – point 5 (new)
Paragraph 2 – point 5 (new)
(5) Notes the Commission’s proposal for the creation of the ‘AccessibleEU’ resource centre by 2022; calls on the Commission to create an EU agency on accessibility (EU Access Board) that would be in charge of developing technical specifications on accessibility in support of specific EU policies and legislation, carrying out consultations with rights-holders, stakeholders and non- governmental organisations, helping Member States and EU institutions to implement accessibility in a harmonised way for the benefit of the single market, and raising awareness of the importance of accessibility for equal societies;
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 1 (new)
(1) Stresses that Article 19 of the CRPD sets out the right to live independently and be included in the community; calls on the Member States to ensure a process that provides for a shift in living arrangements for PwD, from institutional settings to a system enabling social participation and in which services are provided in the community according to individual will and preference; calls on the Member States to include specific targets with clear deadlines in their deinstitutionalisation strategies and to adequately finance the implementation of these strategies;
Amendment 39 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 2 (new)
(2) Recalls that in order to develop appropriate and effective policies and find solutions tailored to the needs of PwD in all their diversity in the EU, there is a need for comparable and reliable EU data; calls, therefore, on the Commission and the Member States to intensify their efforts for a common framework for European statistics on individuals and households to collect reliable data on the participation of PwD, also disaggregated by gender, in the various levels and types of education and labour and in social life;
Amendment 40 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 3 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 3 (new)
(3) Stresses that there is an urgent need to conduct a study and a research to collect data disaggregated by different types of disability and different barriers faced by the different groups of PwD, in particular when trying to access the labour market, which would greatly improve understanding of how unemployment impacts PwD and help the European Commission and Member States in their aim and efforts to improve labour market outcomes for PwD in the EU;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 4 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 4 (new)
(4) Stresses that cost of living with a disability is one of the greatest challenges faced by PwD; underlines, in this respect, an urgent need to collect data to further analyse the issue of living costs for PwD; stresses that this data will help to understand why it is that PwD are so disproportionately affected by poverty, and why the issue of losing one’s disability allowance when a person starts earning a wage can be so problematic and dangerous; underlines that the loss of disability allowance following the take-up of paid work is one of the principle reasons that PwD cannot easily transfer to the labour market, and that puts them at the greatest risk of in-work poverty;
Amendment 42 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 5 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 5 (new)
(5) Stresses that the Article 27 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities clearly calls for every effort to be made to allow PwD to find employment in the open labour market; underlines the key importance to monitor the developments in the EU Member States on fulfilling their obligations under the UNCRPD, or in employing people in sheltered forms of work that lead to in-work poverty; underlines, in this regards, an urgent need to conduct a research on sheltered workshops and insight into how many PwD, including women with disabilities, are in employment in the open labour market; stresses that the Eurostat figures show what percentage of PwD are employed in each Member State, but the quality of employment that each person finds themselves in remains unknown;
Amendment 43 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 – point 6 (new)
Paragraph 3 – point 6 (new)
(6) Recalls the high number of EU citizens deprived of their right to participate in elections, including European Parliament elections, because of their disabilities or mental health problems; calls on the Commission and Member States to guarantee the political rights of PwD by ensuring voting and eligibility rights to all PwD and right to stand for election, without exemptions, and by implementing ad hoc measures aiming at making the next European elections more accessible to PwD and respectful of the right to vote autonomously and in secrecy, or otherwise with the choice of one’s assistant;
Amendment 54 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 4 – point 1 (new)
(1) Regrets the fact that the European Accessibility Act fails to address accessibility of the built environment and of the physical world in general; calls on the Commission to use the European Accessibility Act as a basis for adopting a robust EU framework for an accessible and inclusive environment with fully accessible public spaces, services, including public transport, communication, administrative and financial services, and the built environment; welcomes the Commission’s ‘Access City Award’ initiative;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 4 – point 2 (new)
(2) Outlines that petitioners’ most common concerns regarding the equality of PwD centre around accessibility and social protection, along with employment rights and the right to live independently in the community; calls, therefore, on the Member States to fully implement and continuously monitor all accessibility- related legislation, including Directive (EU) 2019/882 (the European Accessibility Act) in order to effectively and definitively remove and prevent barriers for workers with disabilities, and to improve and ensure the availability of accessible services and the suitability of the conditions under which these services are provided; calls, in this context, on the Member States to consider, when transposing the European Accessibility Act into national legislation, the interconnectivity between the accessibility of services and the accessibility of the built environment;
Amendment 56 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 – point 3 (new)
Paragraph 4 – point 3 (new)
(3) Calls on the Member States to ensure the swift and efficient implementation at all levels of Directive2016/2102 on the accessibility of public sector bodies’ websites and mobile applications, in order to guarantee that PwD are able to access all information they require in an accessible format, including national sign languages; welcomes the Commission’s initiative for an action plan on web accessibility for all EU institutions, bodies and agencies with a view to ensuring the compliance of EU websites, and the documents published on these websites and online platforms, with European accessibility standards, which need to be broadened; urges all EU institutions, bodies and agencies to comply with the European accessibility standards in 2022 at the latest; calls the Commission to pay particular attention, as a matter of priority, to the accessibility of its public consultations, especially where they target PWD and their organisations;
Amendment 57 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 – point 4 (new)
Paragraph 4 – point 4 (new)
(4) Urges the EU institutions to improve the level and quality of accessibility in all of their buildings and remove the existing barriers to their websites, debates and documentation, i.e.to make the information produced accessible by, for example, providing translation into the sign languages of the different Member States and producing documents in Braille and in easy-to-read language;
Amendment 68 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 5 – point 1 (new)
(1) Calls on the EU institutions and the Member States to reaffirm their commitment to realising equality and inclusion for PwD and to fully implement the CRPD, including its Article 27on work and employment;
Amendment 69 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 5 – point 2 (new)
(2) Highlights that sheltered workshops should aim to ensure inclusion, rehabilitation and transition to the open labour market, but are often segregated environments in which workers with disabilities do not have employee status or enjoy labour rights, which clearly constitutes a violation of the CRPD; stresses that inclusive models of supported employment can, if they are rights-based and recognised as employment, respect the rights of PwD and serve inclusion in and transition to the open labour market;
Amendment 80 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 6 – point 1 (new)
(1) Welcomes the fact that Member States are willing to implement inclusive educational policies; calls on the Member States to further increase their education systems’ capacity to provide high-quality accessible education for all learners by promoting specific measures and personalised support, such as accessible and tailored curricula and learning materials, accessible ICTs and appropriate digital education calls on the Commission to strengthen the role of the Child Guarantee, giving consideration to an accessible school award scheme, in ensuring the equal treatment of children with disabilities;
Amendment 81 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 – point 2 (new)
Paragraph 6 – point 2 (new)
(2) Calls on the Commission and the Member States to invest in training professionals regarding the needs of PwD; reiterates that the implementation and allocation of the relevant EU funding programmes should contribute to the transition towards inclusive education; stresses that PwD should be guaranteed access to education, including during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and others, and that Member States should tackle all forms of discrimination and exclusion in this area;
Amendment 84 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Reiterates that PwD, including those with mentintellectual and psychosocial disabilities, should have the right to the highest attainable state of health and access to healthcare, free from discrimination, of the same scope and quality as other EU citizens13 ; _________________ 13 Petitions Nos 0687/2020 and 0470/2020.
Amendment 93 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Highlights that PwD are exposed to discrimination most frequently, in particular those with intellectual, and psychosocial and mental disabilities, and women and girls, migrants and racialised people, including Roma, and members of the LGBTIQ+ community with disabilities; callstresses, in this respect, for athat the proposed Anti- dDiscrimination legislation to protect the rights of PwD and for the horizontal Anti- Discrimination Directive to be unblocked in the Council14 ; _________________ 14 Petitions Nos 0164/2020 and 0226/2021.directive, which would provide greater protection against discrimination of all kinds through a horizontal approach, still remains blocked in the Council for over a decade;
Amendment 106 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9 – point 1 (new)
Paragraph 9 – point 1 (new)
(1) Acknowledges the Commission’s call for all EU institutions, bodies, agencies and delegations to designate ‘disability coordinators’; reiterates its call for focal points to be established in all EU institutions and agencies, including Parliament and the Council, with the central focal point within the Commission’s General Secretariat and supported by an appropriate interinstitutional mechanism; calls on the EU institutions to prioritise the appointment of PwD to the role of disability coordinators;
Amendment 108 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9 – point 3 (new)
Paragraph 9 – point 3 (new)
(3) Encourages the relevant Parliament services to continue their efforts and finalise the project on the inter-service working group on sign language in the shortest possible time frame in order to meet the requests of petition1056/2016 to allow for the tabling of petitions in international and national sign languages used in the EU and thereby make the fundamental right to petition more accessible for sign language users;
Amendment 109 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9 – point 4 (new)
Paragraph 9 – point 4 (new)
(4) Highlights the importance of swiftly addressing accessibility concerns in all relevant policies and instruments, including concerns about public procurement rules and the accessibility of petitions to Parliament;
Amendment 110 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9 – point 5 (new)
Paragraph 9 – point 5 (new)
(5) Highlights the need to provide sign language interpretation services and easy- to-read language translations for committee meetings, plenary meetings and all other Parliament meetings, in order to make them accessible for PwD;