A Bad Investment for Europe

At a meeting today in Brussels, representatives from the European Parliament, European Commission, Permanent Representatives of Member States to the European Union, and civil society organizations came together to discuss European obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Launched at the meeting, a new Mental Health Initiative report finds that Member States are acting contrary to European law by investing EU Structural Funds in institutions for people with disabilities rather than supporting community-based services.

It is hard to understand why, in 2012, there is still a debate about whether institutions are good or bad for people with disabilities. Why is it so easy to ignore and dismiss the experiences of the thousands of people who are still locked away in these institutions? Why are people with disabilities invisible to so many governments?

In many institutions in Europe—especially in Central and Eastern Europe—the unwilling residents are dehumanized. This is devastating for any person. Most of us have the freedom to come and go from our homes as we please. In institutions, residents who are considered difficult are tied up. Others are sent to solitary confinement, sometimes for days on end. The desperation and hopelessness faced by these men, women, and children are absolutely mind numbing.

The European Union and its Member States have an obligation to ensure that European taxpayer money is invested in a manner that respects human rights and fundamental freedoms. These are among the basic values upon which the EU was founded.

Structural Funds investments in institutions are particularly disturbing considering that the EU has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD is legally binding on States Parties and applies civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights to people with disabilities. In particular, Article 19 of the CRPD affirms the right of all people with disabilities to live in the community.

In disbursing Structural Funds, the EU is a donor and thus has a responsibility to prohibit investment in projects that violate its values, not to mention its laws. Member States are re-granters of those funds, and they must also be held accountable for investments in their countries.

Our report, The European Union and Community Living, features legal analysis from Queen’s Counsel Richard Gordon on why the use of Structural Funds to perpetuate institutionalization is contrary to the CRPD, and therefore also contrary to EU law. The CRPD recognizes that it is society that disables people by designing everything, in the broadest sense, to meet the needs of the majority who are not disabled. It acknowledges that society can do a great deal to reduce, and ultimately remove, most if not all disabling barriers, and that doing so is society’s responsibility rather than that of the person with a disability. While people have physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychological differences that may cause functional limitations, these need not lead to disability unless society fails to account for them and does not find ways to include all people, regardless of their individual differences.

The time is now for the European Commission and its Member States to take responsibility for ensuring that Structural Funds investments are no longer used to perpetuate the social exclusion of any European citizen.