EPR Contributes to Consultation on New EU Disability Strategy Actions

EPR Contributes to Consultation on New EU Disability Strategy Actions

In 2021, the European Commission adopted the “Union of Equality: Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030”, aiming to progress towards ensuring that persons with disabilities can fully enjoy their human rights. By 2025, most of the proposed actions and flagship initiatives included in the Strategy were already completed or adopted.

This is why (as explained in a previous news article available here) in the 2026 European Commission Work Programme, the European Commission announced that the Strategy will be updated with the Communication* “Enhancing the strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities up to 2030”, expected by 5 May 2026.

To gather input from stakeholders on what actions should be included in the second phase of the Strategy, the European Commission opened a call for evidence**, open until 6 February 2026. By gathering members’ input, EPR submitted input to the call for evidence (available here), which suggested the following actions for the second half of the Strategy:

• Publish the Framework of Social Services of Excellence for persons with disabilities.
• Support service providers for persons with disabilities in the transition towards community-based services; 
• Create a European Care Deal to support and empower persons with disabilities and address challenges of service providers; 
• Organise an awareness raising campaign to fight against stigma faced by persons with disabilities and to promote their inclusion in the community;
• Link the Disability Employment Package to the Quality Jobs Roadmap and Act; 
• Acknowledge the different employment models for persons with disabilities and explore the opportunities of supported employment; 
• Link the Disability Employment Package to the Union of Skills; 
• Develop a Disability Employment and Skills Guarantee; 
• Study the status quo of the EU Single Market for assistive devices and technologies, and consider potential next steps; 
• Draft legislation on the use of algorithms for managing, monitoring and recruiting workers; 
• Draft a deliverable on AI systems and persons with disabilities to feed codes of practice linked to the AI Act; 
• Work towards the adoption of the Equal Treatment Directive; 
• Include persons with disabilities and involve service providers for persons with disabilities in preparedness work; 
• Promote intersectionality within the Strategy.

* An EU Commission Communication is a non-binding policy instrument that can take many forms: it may include policy evaluations, commentary or explanations of action-programmes or brief outlines on future policies or arrangements concerning details of current policy. The Union of Skills Communication, published in March 2025, is a plan to improve high quality education, training, and lifelong learning in order to increase the number of skilled workers across the EU, and to promote competitiveness.

** The definition of “call for evidence” is available at the EPR Knowledge Hub Glossary of key EU policy terms, here.

The Call for Evidence for the Communication “Enhancing the strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities up to 2030” is available here.

EPR input to the Call for Evidence is available here.