According to the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, “social protection” can be defined as being “composed of a set of actions financed by the State that would:
- support individuals and families in dealing with vulnerabilities along their lifecycle;
- help especially the poor and vulnerable groups to have resilience to respond to crisis and shocks, including social-environmental risks;
- favour social inclusion and support families”.
In this paper we will outline a selection of the most pressing issues related to social protection for persons with disabilities, as well as how and why they could be most effectively addressed at EU level. This is to say, we do not seek to outline the most urgent social protection needs for persons with disabilities per se, but merely those that it would be best to address with a harmonised approach across the entirety of the EU. Furthermore, we must point out that this is not an exhaustive list of issues, and that there are many more that could become more urgent and require EU-level action in the future. Each of our thematic sections will conclude with recommendations on how the EU could take action to address these.