Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-17-Speech-1-041"
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"en.20031117.5.1-041"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching the end of the European Year of People with Disabilities, which is to be concluded in Rome on 5Â December 2003 under the Italian Presidency, and it was the President-in-Office of the European Union himself, who, in his speech at the start of his six-month term of office, made what I consider to be a powerful, historic gesture where social policies relating to people with disabilities are concerned. He explicitly stated that the Union Presidency would take steps to lay the foundations for legislative measures to combat discrimination, producing, in practice, a directive protecting the independence and equal rights of millions of people with disabilities in all aspects of daily life in the new Europe, giving them genuine hope for the future. However, to date, the Commission has neither provided a timetable for a future horizontal directive on the rights of people with disabilities, covering not just work but all aspects of life too, nor even given specific undertakings to integrate the rights of people with disabilities into policy, as confirmed in the recent communication, which would seem, rather, to be no more than the announcement of good intentions. Indeed, it is not clear how the objective of boosting equal opportunities is to be achieved if such opportunities are only available in certain aspects of life such as work.
Here are some examples: with the directive on employment, the Commission’s aim is to achieve full employment of people with disabilities, which would be a step towards eliminating discrimination. This is all well and good, but how is a person to penetrate the labour market nowadays and work towards getting a worthwhile, high-quality job if people with disabilities are not provided with adequate teaching, education and training, for instance? Integration starts early on, as you can see; indeed, it has to start at school. People with disabilities are not divided into sectors or compartments of inactivity, they are girls and boys, men and women who are entitled to full integration, not integration in some areas: thousands of children with disabilities in Europe still live in institutes rather than with their families, for example. The coordination method could come to our aid here too, but there is too little mention of it in the communication.
Lastly, I would say that the European Year is certainly closing with quite a positive result as regards the goals set of raising awareness of disability issues. I feel that what was lacking was a specific, effective measure from the Commission, which did not act diligently on the strong, firm pressure from Parliament or the calls from the Council Presidency. I will end by calling on President Prodi, if Mrs Diamantopoulou will relay the message, to be, perhaps, a little more active and more diligent, even though the Commission is at the end of its term of office, as regards an issue, the issue of disability, which is of such great importance in human, social and cultural terms."@en1
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