Clear Mandate for the European Commission – But minimum basic income for Persons with Disabilities blocked

Yesterday, the European Parliament adopted the report on the EU Strategy for Persons with Disabilities beyond 2024 and formulated extensive recommendations to the Commission. The Disability-Strategy (2021–2030) provides the political framework for implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Commission plans to publish the proposal in spring 2026 for the further development of the Disability-Strategy through 2030.

“We as Parliament have given the Commission a clear mandate. Advancing the Disability-Strategy must be a priority in the Commission,” said Katrin Langensiepen, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in the European Parliament and Chair of the Disability Intergroup.

“I expect the Commission to follow our political recommendations. We need a holistic approach to combating discrimination, poverty and gender-based violence. The Commission must consider the intersectional perspectives of persons with disabilities,” Langensiepen emphasised.

Langensiepen also stressed that it is time for the Commission to address the harmonisation of the status and definition of persons with disabilities. “A person with a disability from Spain is still a person with a disability in France. And that should be the case without lengthy verification and recognition procedures. This is a degrading process that severely undermines a person’s dignity.”

Furthermore, Langensiepen criticised: “It is outrageous that the Christian Democratic group in the Parliament, the EPP, is once again cooperating with the right-conservative parties in the house and has again spoken out against my call for the Commission to propose a directive on minimum basic income. The demand for a concrete budget of 20 million Euros for the European Child Guarantee was also rejected by an EPP and right-conservative majority in plenary, after it had already been adopted at committee level. This is not how sustainable poverty reduction works. This is what the ‘social autumn’ at European level looks like,” Langensiepen concluded.

The Parliament’s demands for the full and swift implementation of web accessibility and of the European Accessibility Act remain crucial. In addition, we call for the European Accessibility Resource Centre (“AccessibleEU”) to be transformed into a permanent supervisory authority for the implementation and monitoring of accessibility in Europe. “Without this step, effectively mainstreaming the concerns of persons with disabilities into EU policymaking will not be possible,” Langensiepen said in closing.