The Council of the European Union published Council Recommendations ‘Europe on the Move’ – learning mobility opportunities for everyone in May. The focus of the recommendations is on improving learning mobility (such as programmes like ERASMUS+) and making it more inclusive.
We welcome these Recommendations, which clearly acknowledge the need to facilitate mobility for persons with disabilities. The final recommendations included some of our advocacy demands.
The challenges identified regarding persons with disabilities are:
- Lack of financial support and availability of information on mobility opportunities.
- Not enough progress on systematic support for learners from disadvantaged groups.
- The pandemic – which stopped some mobility actions temporarily or moved them to virtual versions.
- The implementation of inclusion measures present in Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps in other mobility schemes.
- The impossibility of accumulating pension entitlements with mobility funds.
- Providing clear, accessible, and timely information about mobility opportunities, the procedures to apply and during each stage of the project.
Why is it relevant for the disability community?
The text proposes 17 recommendations for Member States regarding EU mobility schemes that are new or have undergone changes since the previous recommendations were released in 2011.
The Recommendations set a target of 20% of participants in EU mobility programmes being people “with fewer opportunities”, which includes persons with disabilities. The European Commission is requested to review this target in 2030, and to develop a strategy to collect data on people with fewer opportunities.
We also see clear improvements compared to the previous recommendations, especially regarding the dedicated recommendation on digital inclusion and accessibility. Recommendation 12 includes specific wording on accessibility on:
c) providing support to make learning mobility accessible to people with fewer opportunities, as well as support for organisations hosting them, for example by providing appropriate funding at national or regional level and by fostering synergies among different EU, international, national and regional funding instruments;
d) providing accessible, up-to-date and timely information on available learning mobility funding, the timing of payments and other support available to learners;
What is missing?
Learners with disabilities still face severe difficulties and barriers to exercising their freedom of movement to study, volunteer, or do a traineeship in Europe. These Council Recommendations give incentives to EU Member States but are not mandatory. Moreover, disability is mentioned only once in the definition of people with fewer opportunities. Persons with disabilities are, therefore, encompassed in a large group with varying needs. Without disaggregated data and a specific focus on persons with disabilities, we do not really know how many are participating in mobility programmes.
Many of our demands are still absent from the recommendations from this proposal, such as:
- Including the accessibility of the digital systems used, such as websites or platforms to register mobility, submit costs, receive online language support, find mobility opportunities, etc.
- Referencing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- Referencing the EU Strategy on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021 -2030
- Recommending collecting disability disaggregated data to measure the effectiveness of the inclusion measures for persons with disabilities
- Acknowledging and supporting the Inclusive Mobility Alliance, including trough financial support.
Conclusions
There is clearly an improvement in comparison with the previous Recommendations.
The implementation of inclusion measures in EU mobility schemes will reduce the discrimination faced by those taking part in schemes that did not exist in 2011, such as the European Solidarity Corps.
A number of our requests have been taken on board. However, we consider it a missed opportunity not to clearly commit to digital accessibility requirements as foreseen by the EU Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and mobile application.