Pre-employment inquiries and medical examinations as barriers to the employment of persons with disabilities: reconciling the principle of equal treatment and health and safety regulations under European Union law

This Report presents a legal analysis of the coexistence between regulations seeking to protect health and safety at work and the requirement of non-discrimination in work and employment against persons with disabilities. Its asks whether health and safety regulations may constitute barriers to the employment of persons with disabilities, and, where such barriers exist, which legal responses they call for. It focuses especially on what the right to respect for private life and the rules protecting personal data may contribute to lowering such barriers. Drawing the consequences from the emergence of the principle of equal treatment with regard to persons with disabilities, and from the rise of the civil rights paradigm in disability law generally, it illustrates how the existing regulatory framework may be relied upon in order to effectuate the shift from a « fitness » approach to an «adaptation » approach in the regulation of preemployment inquiries and medical examinations. It insists in particular on the function of the obligation to provide an effective accommodation to persons with disabilities in alleviating the tension between regulations relating to health and safety at work and the prohibition of discrimination.