Annotated review of European Union law and policy with reference to disability

The European Disability Expertise (EDE) provides the European Commission's Disability and Inclusion Unit with scientific support and advice. One of the functions of EDE is to establish a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating EU laws and policies that affect disabled people (including, for example, legislation, communications and resolutions of the Council, Parliament and Commission, and of associated committees, etc.). The resulting summaries and details of laws and policies are made available for the benefit of the wider research community, policymakers and other stakeholders via the Commission's homepage.2 The annotated review of EU legislation and policy instruments presented here both updates and extends a mapping of legislative instruments first conducted in 2008, and regularly carried out since then.3 The annotated review covers both disability-specific and mainstream instruments, insofar as they either mention disability explicitly or could in another way be interpreted as covering disability.4 The review therefore provides evidence of the extent to which disability is being mainstreamed in different areas of EU law and policy. The summaries and examples presented here relate to primary and secondary EU legislation, funding instruments and the most important soft-law instruments. Given the significant number of soft-law instruments relating to disability, and the speed at which they are updated and become out-of-date, the emphasis is placed on instruments that have been adopted after the conclusion of the CPRD by the EC/EU in 2010.