Disability as the new frontrunner in EC non-discrimination legislation? Report of the Public Hearing at the European Parliament: Future anti-discrimination legislation: what are the specificities of the 'disability' ground 14 May 2008

Discrimination on the basis of disability is often a distinct kind of discrimination.
This is because people with a disability encounter wholly different problems in
their daily lives in comparison to people who fall under one of the other grounds
addressed by EC anti-discrimination legislation.2 In order to be able to fully take
into account the specificities of disability in new EC anti-discrimination legislation,
a public hearing on this topic was convened at the European Parliament on
14 May 2008 to give MEPs, representatives of people with disabilities and other
stakeholders the opportunity to comment on the subject. This paper is a reflection
on this meeting and aims to shed light on the different opinions which were espoused.
At the time of the hearing the Commission's stated plans were to propose
a new anti-discrimination directive based on Article 13 EC which only addressed
disability. The Commission subsequently revised its plans, and proposed a 'horizontal'
directive addressing a variety of grounds. 3