Today ENIL is launching its policy demands to the Freedom Drive 2024.
From the 23rd to the 25th of September hundreds of disabled people will be present in the capital of Europe, during the Freedom Drive to reclaim their rights.
Across the entire EU, disabled people are still being segregated and excluded from mainstream society. The number of disabled people residing in institutions remains unchanged. It is still very difficult to access personal assistance, peer support and mainstream services. Disabled people are frequently discriminated against. We are far away from true co-production. The European Commission is pursuing policy projects which are incompatible with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The European Network on Independent Living is calling for decisive policy change and has formulated five policy demands, expressing the wishes of disabled people:
- Stop public funding for segregating services of any kind and size, most importantly institutions.
- Guarantee the right to Independent Living by adopting binding commitments to close institutions and expand community-based services.
- Change or withdraw the proposal for a regulation on the protection of vulnerable adults in cross-border situations. We do not want deprivations of legal capacity, nor breaches of our right to privacy.
- Create social equality by combating exclusion from the labour market, tackling poverty, the housing crisis and discrimination in accessing healthcare and social protection.
- Ensure an effective implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). It cannot be that the EU is working on legislation that calls the Convention into question.
We call on the European Commission, the European Parliament and the national governments to implement our demands in all of their activties.
Our complete Freedom Drive Demands are available here as a pdf file and here as a word document.
