In Europe, the principle of non-discrimination has been integrated in national laws of most countries - following the adoption of Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 and the Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000. However, the way this issue is taken into account in national or local policies may vary from one country to another. Regarding the participation of persons with disabilities to the open labour market, the range of policies remains very broad and substantial differences can be observed in terms of employment enablers, social services support, social security systems and environmental infrastructure. To date, little research has focused on this issue within the public sector. Even if at the European level, the term “public sector” or even the term “public employment” refer both to various realities for historical and political raisons, focusing on this sector was an opportunity to support discussions on how European countries were dealing with issues related to the employment of persons with disabilities. We especially focused on policies and measures implemented.

Two sources of data were used. First, each country's representative has written a report on her/his country's situation including: definitions of disability and of public sector as well as an overview of the current national employment policy and statistical data. Then, to illustrate the implementation of these policies, six standard case studies were developed. Data were collected for 12 countries from 2013 to 2015 and were collectively analysed during three seminars of two days.

This session will include tree presentation. The first one will present an overview of the policies implemented. The second one will explore the barriers and facilitators met by persons with disabilities to access paid jobs. And a third one will focus on emergent solutions and challenges (see attached file for details). The session will aim at discussing and completing the results of this research project.