European Commission publishes Study on alternative employment models for persons with disabilities

European Commission publishes Study on alternative employment models for persons with disabilities

On 30 April 2025, the European Commission (EC) published its long-awaited “Study on alternative employment models for persons with disabilities”, which is one of the last deliverables of the Disability Employment Package – an EU initiative stemming from the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030 to support Member States in ensuring that persons with disabilities enjoy social inclusion and economic autonomy through employment.

The Study presents a review of the current state of practice concerning a broad range of alternative employment models for persons with disabilities, i.e., organisational models that enable persons with disabilities to participate in productive work by using sheltered employment settings, including:

• Practices from traditional sheltered workshops to work integration social enterprises;
• Pathways that lead from sheltered employment to mainstream jobs;
• Supported employment and related approaches (e.g., Individual Placement and Support (IPS) and customised employment).

The study includes an in-depth analysis of 8 EU Member States: Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, as well as 20 good practices and 16 recommendations to promote quality employment of persons with disabilities.

Recommendations include:

• Boost educational attainment and skills of persons with disabilities;
• Create effective pathways for transitioning from sheltered employment settings; 
• Step up efforts for awareness raising measures targeting families and carers;
• Tackle structural disincentives in national welfare benefit systems;
• Address stigmatisation of disability;
• Address employers’ lack of knowledge;
• Review quota systems;
• Make strategic use of public procurement to strengthen WISEs and boost employment in the open labour market; 
• Mainstream supported employment and related approaches;
• Address the lack of adequate funding for supported employment and work integration enterprises offering non-segregated employment;
• Improve the capacities for effective matching of supply and demand; 
• Promote initiatives to let persons with disabilities gain work experience in the open labour market;
• Review the current system for sheltered employment.

It must be noted that the EC took into account the input provided by EPR and its members within the study, notably EPR’s Papers “Summary of EPR Key Inputs to the European Commission’s Study on Alternative Models of Employment for Persons with Disabilities” and “Pathways to employment: Analysis of policies and practices for pathways to the mainstream labour market”. 

Study on alternative employment models for persons with disabilities available here.

More information on Disability Employment Package available here.