A New Era in Human Rights Protection in the European Community: The Implications the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for the European Community

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is ground breaking in many respects: it is the first human rights Convention of the new century; it is not merely a non-discrimination convention, but also provides for a wide range of classical and substantive rights; and, from a European perspective, it is the first human rights convention which the European Community (EC) negotiated and signed, and it will be the first such convention which the Community will ratify. Consequently, the CRPD will take on a completely new legal status within EC law, and will have to be respected in its totality, and not as a mere add on to be referred to in passing in Community instruments. The Community competence to negotiate, sign and ultimately ratify the Convention, alongside the Member States, resulted primarily from changes introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty. Under Article 13 EC the Community acquired powers to take action to combat disability discrimination. In addition EC competences exist in a number of other areas where a disability dimension exists, although no other specific mention of disability can be found in the main body of the EU or EC Treaties. As a consequence of this direct involvement with the Convention, the EC will, like other State Parties, be bound by its obligations. The goal of this paper is to give some first impressions as to what this implies for the EC and, specifically, what legal obligations ratification of the Convention will impose on the Community.