No CI 36/6 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
II 
(Preparatory Acts) 
COMMISSION 
Council Recommendation on the employment of disabled people in the European Community 
COM (86) 9 final 
(Submitted by the Commission to the Council on 29 January 1986) 
(86/C 136/06) 
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, 
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European 
Economic Community, 
Having regard to the draft submitted by the 
Commission, 
Having regard to the opinion of the European Par­
liament, 
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and 
Social Committee, 
Whereas the Council resolution of 21 January 1974 (') 
concerning a social action programme provides, inter 
alia, for the implementation of a programme for the 
vocational and social integration of handicapped 
persons; 
Whereas the Council resolution of 27 June 1974 (2) 
established an initial action programme to promote the 
vocational rehabilitation of handicapped persons; 
Whereas the resolution of the Council and Rep­
resentatives of the Governments of the Member States of 
21 December 1981 (3) concerning the social integration-
of disabled people invites Member States to 'ensure that 
handicapped people do not shoulder an unfair burden of 
the effects, on both employment and resources, of 
economic difficulties', and to 'promote measures to 
prepare handicapped people for an active life', but does 
not provide for a concerted or concentrated Community 
effort in this regard; 
Whereas, for the purpose of this recommendation, 
'disabled people' includes all people with disabilities 
which result from physical, mental or psychological 
impairments; 
(*) OJNoC 13, 12. 2.1974, p. 1. 
(2) OJ No C 80, 9. 7. 1974, p. 30. 
(J) OJ No C 347, 31. 12. 1981, p. 1. Whereas disabled people have the same right as all other 
workers to equal opportunity in training and 
employment; 
Whereas, in a period of economic crisis, action at 
European and Community levels should be not only 
continued but also intensified in order to promote the 
achievement of equal opportunity in practice by means 
of positive and coherent policies; 
Whereas these policies should take account of the 
aspirations of disabled people for a fully active and 
independent life; 
Whereas the European Parliament, in its resolution of 11 
March 1981 (4), has stressed the need to promote at 
Community level the economic, social and vocational 
integration of disabled people, 
RECOMMENDS TO MEMBER STATES: 
1. To take all appropriate measures to promote fair 
opportunities for disabled people in the field of 
employment and vocational training, including initial 
training and employment as well as resettlement after 
rehabilitation. 
This principle of fair opportunity should be applied in 
respect of 
(a) Access to employment and vocational training, 
including services of guidance, placement and 
follow-up; 
(b) Retention in that employment or training, and 
protection from unfair dismissal; 
(c) Opportunities for promotion. 
2. To this end, to establish and implement coherent, 
comprehensive and positive policies for the vocational 
training and employment of disabled people, which 
should take account of measures and developments 
elsewhere in the Community. 
(4) OJ No C 77, 6. 4. 1981, p. 27. 
4.6. 86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/7 
These policies should provide in particular for: 
(a) Elimination of negative discrimination by: 
(i) Revision of laws, regulations, administrative 
provisions, and invalidation or amendment of 
provisions in collective agreements, which are 
contrary to the principle of fair opportunity 
for disabled people. In particular, rules on 
unfair dismissal should contain specific 
provision for protection from dismissal on 
grounds of disability however or whenever 
acquired. 
(ii) Ensuring that there are no exceptions to the 
principle of equal access to training or 
employment other than those justified on the 
ground of a specific incompatibility, if 
necessary confirmed by medical opinion, 
between a particular activity forming part of 
a job or course of training and a particular 
disability; and that any such exception is 
reviewed periodically in order to establish 
whether it continues to be justified. 
(iii) Ensuring that individuals who consider that 
the principle of fair opportunity has not been 
applied to them can bring that matter before 
the courts after, if appropriate, recourse to 
other competent bodies. 
(iv) Ensuring that any tests required for access to, 
or validation of, vocational training courses 
are conducted in such a way that candidates 
with disabilities are not thereby disad­
vantaged. 
(b) Positive action for disabled people, including: 
(i) Bearing in mind differences in the character 
of various enterprises and in environmental 
circumstances, the fixing of realistic 
percentage targets for the employment of 
disabled people by public or private 
employers having more than 20 employees. 
Measures should be adopted for making 
these targets public and enforcing them. (ii) The adoption in each Member State of a 
code of good practice on the employment of 
disabled people, based upon this 
recommendation and the contents of the 
model code of positive action attached to this 
recommendation. The Code should be 
disseminated as widely as possible and should 
be applied in both the public and private 
sectors. 
(iii) Provision requiring every public and private 
employer to whom point (i) above applies to 
adopt a policy for the employment of 
disabled people in accordance with the code 
of good practice. Member States should 
establish the means for publishing these 
policies and the annual progress made in 
implementation of them, according to already 
existing procedures for disseminating infor­
mation in the social field. 
(iv) Provision requiring the employer to 
cooperate with rehabilitation services in the 
resettlement, with the same employer as far 
as possible, of any employee who becomes 
disabled, whether or not as a result of an 
accident at work or of working conditions. 
3. To report to the Commission on the measures they 
have taken to implement this recommendation with a 
view to enabling the Commission to present the report 
referred to below. 
AND INVITES THE COMMISSION: 
1. To establish and operate a system for the exchange of 
information and experience on the rehabilitation and 
employment of disabled people between national 
authorities and other designated agencies. 
2. To report to the Council on the implementation of 
this recommendation within three years of its 
adoption. 
MODEL CODE OF POSITIVE ACTION TO PROMOTE THE VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND 
EMPLOYMENT OF DISABLED PEOPLE 
1. Job creation 
Measures should ensure that disabled people are 
given a full and fair opportunity to benefit from 
concerted job creation projects, such as regional 
development programmes, local employment 
initiatives, actions to promote the setting up of cooperatives or of smaller, medium-sized enterprises, 
etc. 
New employment opportunities for disabled people 
should be created by means of national initiatives 
both in the new technology sector itself and in the 
use of new technologies as aids to make employment 
No C 136/8 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
possible in other fields. Projects to enable disabled 
people to take on telework are to be promoted and 
supported. 
Equally, projects are to be promoted and supported 
which train and prepare disabled people to create 
their own business, or which find new employment 
opportunities for them in the media or in services on 
behalf of other disabled people. 
Other sectors are to be identified (such as tertiary 
services, including tourism and catering; intensive 
agriculture or horticulture, forestry, etc.), which 
both have a good future and are suitable for people 
with various disabilities, and schemes implemented 
for creating new jobs for disabled people in these 
fields. 
Action should be undertaken at national level to 
ensure that new telephone systems are adaptable to 
the needs of blind operators. Representatives of 
disabled people are to be consulted as to other 
specific risks to employment resulting from new 
technological developments, and appropriate action 
taken. Special national plans are to be drawn up for 
the re-employment of mentally handicapped workers 
who lose their jobs because of changes in the 
character of the employment market. More oppor­
tunities will be created for part-time employment for 
disabled workers. 
2. Incentives to employers 
Funds from public sources are to be made available 
to cover or contribute to the special costs to an 
employer of taking on a disabled worker. The 
eligible expenditures should include adaptations to 
machinery or equipment, provision of access facilities 
and additional staff costs, and the grants should 
apply both when a worker is re-employed after 
incurring a disability and for new recruitments. In 
the latter case, a contribution should also be made 
from public funds to the worker's salary over a given 
period of induction training. 
3. Placement and support in the work place 
In all regions placement services with an explicit 
responsibility to help suitably trained disabled people 
to find a job should be set up, and the necessary 
training programmes for placement officers 
implemented. These services should also be 
responsible for following and supporting the disabled 
person in the job, at least for an initial period. Trade Unions are to be encouraged to give any 
necessary support to disabled workers and to ensure 
that their interests are properly catered for in rep­
resentative structures. 
4. Sheltered employment 
The situation in each Member State should be 
reviewed in regard to sheltered employment and 
sheltered occupation, and plans drawn up for the 
future of this sector. On the quantitative side, plans 
should assess future demand and the need to develop 
or reduce such provision. On the qualitative side, the 
review should take into consideration the following 
approaches: 
— improving, the quality of less successful 
workshops or centres so that they approximate to 
the best, 
— introducing new forms of activity (for example, 
in the computer sector) which are both more 
interesting and commercially more successful, 
— increasing the amount of genuine training 
available in workshops, 
— developing the transitional role of workshops, 
i. e. their function as assessment and personal 
development centres coming between basic 
education or a period of unemployment and 
entry to the open labour market, 
— reducing segregation by developing sheltered 
posts or groups within normal enterprises, or 
mixed cooperatives. 
5. Social security systems 
Measures are to be implemented to ensure that 
disabled workers who lose their jobs or who cannot 
find employment after vocational rehabilitation do 
not find themselves thereafter, simply because of 
their disability, financially worse off than other 
workers in similar circumstances. 
Measures are also to be taken to ensure that benefit 
systems do not act as disincentives to part-time 
employment, to trial periods of employment or to 
the gradual take up of a job or return to it, 
whenever any of these patterns is desirable from the 
disabled worker's and employer's point of view. 
6. Transition, vocational rehabilitation and vocational 
training 
A high priority should be given to improving the 
availability and quality of vocational preparation and 
training for disabled people, with particular regard 
to these factors: 
— giving equal consideration to the needs of 
workers who incur disability through accident or 
disease, and to young people whose disability is 
congenital or was incurred in childhood or 
adolescence, 
4. 6. 86 Official Journal o; 
— adapting the content of the training courses 
available to match more realistically the oppor­
tunities in the labour market, 
— ensuring that training establishments maintain 
direct links with local representatives of the 
social partners, 
— improving training methods, in particular by 
developing the use of new technologies as 
training aids, by introducing modular training 
and, where appropriate, distant learning facilities, 
— encouraging experimentation in course structure 
and building design so as to facilitate the coordi­
nation of theoretical and practical training, 
— eliminating barriers, by reducing entrance 
requirements, relaxing age-limit regulations, 
allowing take-up of courses whenever desired 
during the year ('staggered' entry), and 
accelerating official recognition of new courses, 
— encouraging disabled trainees to take a more 
active part in planning their own training 
programmes, 
— enabling disabled trainees to enrol in integrated 
training courses in normal establishments 
wherever possible and desirable, 
— guaranteeing continuity throughout the transition 
or rehabilitation process by promoting inter­
professional cooperation and the creation of 
multidisciplinary teams. 
7. Assessment and guidance 
In all regions provision is to be made of effective 
educational and vocational guidance services, with a 
clear responsibility to meet the needs of disabled 
people. Where this need is met by a general, rather 
than specialized, guidance service, measures are to 
be taken to ensure that staff are trained so as to 
understand and deal with the special needs of people 
with disabilities. 
Studies are to be undertaken to identify the most 
effective assessment methods, and these methods 
introduced as widely as possible. Priority is to be 
given to the principles that the disabled person 
himself (and, where appropriate, his family) should 
participate actively in assessment, and that every 
client should be encouraged to opt for the best level 
of training and highest vocational goal of which he 
is capable. European Communities No C 136/9 
8. The supporting environment 
Measures are to be taken to ensure that disabled 
people live in an environment which makes it 
possible for them to benefit from further education 
and training, and to make their full contribution to 
the economy. Existing legislation is to be effectively 
implemented and where necessary new legislation 
introduced to promote suitable housing (wherever 
possible integrated in the open community), 
adequate transport to places of training and work 
and access to and within the workplace, especially in 
the office sector. 
9. Consultation, coordination and participation 
National, regional and local authorities should 
review their systems of consultation, coordination 
and participation including in this review the public 
services and agencies, the voluntary organizations, 
independent professionals, the social partners and 
the media as well as disabled people and their 
families. Particular priority should be given to the 
active involvement of disabled people, whether in a 
representative or personal capacity, in the taking and 
implementation of decisions concerning them. 
10. Information and advice 
For the benefit of disabled people, their families and 
the professionals (whether case-workers or 
administrators) concerned, a system of information 
and advice should be developed. This system should 
cover technical aids and other questions of 
importance to disabled people; it could consist of 
specialized centres, or of services developed in 
already existing centres with wider functions; and it 
should be extended below the national level to 
regional and local levels over time as resources 
permit. 
Coordinated action is also to be undertaken to 
inform and advise politicians, the social partners and 
the general public about the capacities and the needs 
of disabled people. In particular, video programmes 
on disability problems could be made widely 
available through appropriate channels such as 
interest groups and the social partners' training 
systems. 
11. Research 
Social research in this field should be encouraged 
and coordinated both in order to analyse needs and 
possibilities, and to evaluate the effectiveness of 
measures undertaken. National data bases of all such 
research should be established. 
NoC 136/10 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
ANNEX 
Analyses of the situation and measures concerning the employment of disabled people in the 
European Community 
'The yearning for work is linked to human nature itself and aims well beyond the satisfaction of 
merely material needs''(') 
I. INTRODUCTION: THE BASIS OF THE ANALYSIS 
1. The Commission has based this analysis in the first place on four studies (2) which were undertaken 
between 1982 and 1983 and which explored the problems from different points of view — statistical, 
psychological, juridical, sociological and ergonomic. In addition, the Community network of rehabil­
itation centres formed three working parties which reported in 1983 on the employment and vocational 
training of disabled people, and the European associations of and for disabled people with which the 
Commission is in regular contact were invited to submit data or position papers on the issue. In this 
way the Commission has been able to draw on the knowledge and opinion of practitioners and 
consumers as well as reseachers. 
2. The Commission has moreover been made aware of the special relevance to the employment of the 
disabled of vocational rehabilitation and training. With this in mind the Commission prepared a 
discussion paper for the Advisory Committee on Vocational Training (3) which was discussed at the 
Committee's meeting in September 1983. As a result of this discussion, valuable notes of comment were 
submitted by a number of members of the Committee, and these have been taken into consideration in 
those sections of this Communication which deal with vocational training. 
3. At the same time the Commission has been able to follow closely the work of the international organi­
zations, which, inspired by the United Nations Decade of follow-up to the International Year of 1981 
as well as by the common sense of urgency in face of the critical problems to be faced, have been 
exceptionally active in the field of the rehabilitation and employment of people with disabilities. Of 
special importance has been the adoption by the International Labour Organization in 1983 of a 
convention and recommendation on the rehabilitation and employment of disabled persons. The 
positive approach as well as the solidarity of the Community countries on a number of important issues 
was a striking feature of the preparation of these documents. The Council of Europe (partial 
agreement in the social and public health field) is also making a double contribution of exceptional 
value in the systematic restructuring of its compendium of information on national legislation 
concerning the rehabilitation and employment of the disabled, and in the updating and collation of all 
its past resolutions to form a new comprehensive resolution embodying a coherent policy for the 
rehabilitation of disabled persons. Equally valuable and complementary is the Handicapped Adolescent 
Programme of the OECD (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation), which has now moved 
on from the theme of in-school integration to that of transition from school to working life; here the 
stress is on the encouragement, description and evaluation of innovatory approaches and projects, and 
on the analysis of the implication of the outcomes of these for policy. The interdependence between all 
this well-directed international activity and that of the European Community greatly increases the 
support afforded to the efforts of all the Member States concerned. 
(') From 'Assessing Needs; Report of a Survey carried out in Athens in 1984', a paper presented by the 
Greek Spastics Society to a Seminar supported by the Commission and organized by the International 
Cerebral Palsy Society in Cambridge, April 1984. 
(2) The four studies are: 
'The Handicapped and their employment', Guy Mangin (EUROSTAT, 1983), 
'A functional assessment of disabled workers in the light of task demands of new micro-electronic 
devices', Robert Feeney, University of Loughburough, 1982, 
'Overiew: Disability and employment', Mary Croxen, Open University, 1982, 
'The economic integration of the disabled: an analysis of measures and trends in Member States', 
Eliane Vogel Polski and others, Free University Brussels, 1983. 
(3) Commission paper 'The vocational training of disabled people in the European Community', June 1983. 
4.6. 86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/11 
4. In January 1984 the Commission invited Professor Albeda, dean of the faculty of economics in the 
University of Limburg, Maastricht, to prepare a synthesis report (') which would take into account the 
studies and other contributions already received and would form the basis of a multi-representative 
workshop which the Commission organized in Brussels in March 1984. Finally, the employment theme 
was the main item on the agenda of two meetings (April and June 1984) of the Commission's Liaison 
Group on Disability, consisting of representatives of the ministries concerned in all the Member States. 
The Liaison Group has also been an important source of documentation concerning recent 
developments in Member States. 
II. THE SITUATION 
A. General positive factors concerning disability 
5. Where so many difficult problems exist, a completely unbalanced picture would result if an account 
were not first given of the many highly significant positive features in the situation. While medical 
advances can increase the number of actual disabilities by improving the rates of survival at birth, after 
accident or in old age, against this must of course be set not only the cure of many previously 
incurable impairments but also the reduction of disabilities resulting from impairments which 
themselves remain uncured. At the same time considerable advances have been made in the theory and 
practice of pedagogy, opening up new learning possibilities for mentally retarded as well as physically 
disabled people at all levels of education and training. In some cases this effect is heightened by the 
positive consequences of the 'mainstreaming' tendency to integrate disabled children or young people 
into ordinary schools or colleges. 
6. Equally dramatic headway has been made in the reduction or even elimination of handicaps resulting 
from disabilities however severe. The range and quality of technical aids, and the availability of infor­
mation about them, are in general advancing all the time, and there is no form of disability whose 
resulting handicaps cannot be reduced in one way or another by their means; the present contribution, 
let alone the future potential, of aids using new informatic or telematic technologies is especially 
important. The benefits offered extend over every phase and almost every aspect of life — basic 
functioning, education, training, employment, leisure, communication, independent living. Increasingly 
it is no exaggeration to say that the blind can read, the deaf can use the telephone, the paralysed can 
move with considerable freedom, the mentally retarded can learn. With the aid of a computer, even a 
person so severely paralysed from birth that he can only nod his head or blow can learn to 
communicate and control his environment. 
7. The combination of technical advances with changing attitudes and a developing sense of public 
responsibility has brought a number of wider ranging benefits. A tetraplegic person may be able to 
drive a car which has been specially adapted for him; in a number of cities public transport systems 
have been adapted or door-to-door transport provisions established (2). There have been many imagi­
native and flexible housing schemes which enable independent living without loss of the necessary 
professional support and without the creation of ghettoes (3). Mobility in the street has been improved 
by the provision in some cities of ramps for wheel-chair users or of tactile or audible aids for blind 
pedestrians. Much has also been done to make public buildings — offices, hotels, shops, educational 
estabishments, cultural and leisure facilities — physically accessible, and to adapt work places to the 
needs of disabled employees. It is true that in all these areas the record of achievement throughout the 
Community is extremely variable, but the achievements are real and a basis of good practice has been 
founded. 
8. It is important also not to underestimate the efforts which have been made by Member States to set up 
or support coordinating bodies at national level. In some cases these may include in their 
responsibilities a part of the actual implementation of policy and provision of services; in others the 
stress is on consultation and information roles. The French 'Comite National de Liaison pour la 
O 'Disabled people and their employment', by Will Albeda, in collaboration with the European Centre for 
Work and Society, Maastricht. 
(2) See the Commission's Study 'Transport for the Disabled: Door-to-door Transport Systems', Erica 
Research Institute, November 1982. 
(5) See especially the Commission's Communication COM(80) 491 of September 1980, reporting the 
housing innovations supported by the Community's Programme of Pilot Projects for the Housing of 
Disabled People. 
No C 136/12 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
Readaptation des Handicapes' is a good example of such national provision; so also are the 'Bundes-
arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Rehabilitation' in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands Council 
for the Disabled 'Stichting Nederlandse Gehandicaptenraad', the National Rehabilitation Board in 
Ireland, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation in the United Kingdom. A number of 
these bodies provide the national secretariats of rehabilitation international and so are playing an active 
part in the reciprocal exchange of data and ideas at world level; organized also on the European plane, 
the secretariats in the Community countries have regular discussions with the Commission on all the 
main social issues of disability, thus ensuring a Community demension to their work. 
9. Much of this a practical achievement has resulted from (and, in its turn, further encouraged) a change 
of attitudes — among employers, for example, trade union officials, administrators and professionals; 
to some extent also among the general public. In promoting this change, there is no doubt that the 
International Year of Disabled People (1981) has been a major factor. At times, indeed, it is hard not 
to be impressed rather by the darker side: the persistence of apathy, ignorance and ill-disguised fear 
towards many forms of disability can be a depressing phenomenon. Yet, on the positive side, there is a 
growing concern, for example, to breakdown the barriers which have traditionally existed between the 
practitioners of different professions, and between the professionals and either administrators or, even 
more important, their clients ('). In some countries at least, magazine programmes or documentary 
films broadcast on radio or television are having an important impact. There is a widespread and 
increasingly effective will to eliminate the debilitating effect of an undue paternalism which has charac­
terized much well-intentioned activity in the past. Though reservations and prejudices persist, it is 
encouraging that many employers have completely changed their attitudes when they have learned in 
practice what a disabled worker has to offer. Indeed there is a mass of evidence from every walk of live 
and every level of society that this is a world where everything can change once the ice is broken. 
10. Not rapidly, at least in Europe, yet perceptibly and increasingly, disabled people themselves are 
responding to this complex of predicament and opportunity. Individuals have always of course done 
this; increasingly it is realised that, apart from the basic few, organization and solidarity are needed if 
the challenge is to be met. In all Community countries the associations of parents and families of 
disabled people, and of disabled people themselves, are more or less influential, and the trend is for 
their influence to grow; at European level it is also being felt, and the Commission is encouraging this 
development. The truth is that the good-will of the non-disabled is essential, but it is not enough; it 
cannot alone be relied upon to produce effective results in hard times. Disabled people need therefore 
the support of well-directed self-advocacy too. This will nowhere be more effective than when linked 
to active self-help systems and activities, such as the Independent Living Movement which is now 
begining to take root in the Community at points as far apart as Derbyshire and Munich. 
11. In summary, the positive factors can be seen as a combination of somewhat slow and sporadic but 
distinct progress as far as concerns general environmental questions, supporting systems, the attitudes 
of others towards disabled people, and the self-image and aspiration of disabled people themselves, 
with very much more rapid advances in the scientific and technological field. What matters for the 
present purpose is that this combination has changed and will continue to change the threshold of 
employability. The reality now is that to speak of unemployability, in an absolute sense, is no longer 
possible; the most one can do, in the negative direction, is to confess that in some situations one 
cannot imagine how a certain person may become ready to be employed in the foreseeable future — 
and even then, quite often and probably more and more frequently, one will be proved wrong. 
B. General problems of disability 
12. Against these substantial positive factors must be set a number of general problems which act as 
barriers to the achievement of a full and satisfactory life by many disabled people, and which need to 
be presented before considering problems which are specific to employment. Some of these derive from 
the nature of disability itself, others are centred in the response which society makes to disability. 
(') See the recent (1983) Commission's studies on 'Inter-Professional Co-operation' by Professor Boris 
Ford and 'The role of the voluntary bodies' by V. Koditz, both focussing on the transition needs of 
young disabled people. 
4.6.86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/13 
13. One group of problems concerns the very diversity of disabilities. On the side of disabled people 
themselves, this factor has acted as an understandable break in the development of a sense of 
comprehensive solidarity, and therefore has in practice tended to impede the formation of effectively 
powerful structures of self-help and advocacy. For administrators and providers the diversity also 
constitutes an intractable difficulty: they are perpetually either trying to find a narrow path between 
overspecialization and overgeneralization in their definition of the problems to be confronted, or else 
they are having to make a series of discrete decisions to take comparatively narrow or broad ap­
proaches to specific situations or needs. 
14. Disability also entails, both for the disabled person and for the policy maker or service provider, the 
dilemma of stigma. In order both to plan services and to deliver them, the provider must know what 
and where the needs are, and be able to make at least some assessment of trends. So he needs to 
identify disabled people, collect detailed information about them, perhaps for certain purposes invite or 
require them to register themselves as disabled. The pursuit even of an active policy of integration 
depends on first identifying and so distinguishing those who are to be integrated. And for the disabled 
person himself the dilemma is clear enough: to qualify for a benefit, he must accept a categorization 
which may diminish his selfimage or damage the way others perceive him. For him, too, therefore, the 
public route to integration may appear both irksome and overexposed. 
15. Negative factors which can be seen in the response of society to disabled people are of three kinds: 
those which are manifested in legislation, in the provision of services, and in the reactions of the general 
public. As to legislation, although there are many useful measures in force in the Community countries, 
the general picture is unsatisfactory for four reasons. The basis of past legislation naturally reflects the 
vision of the time, a vision which may now appear limited or distorted; nor have modifications kept up 
with changes in the situation or in attitudes. Legislation has also often been piecemeal, so that the 
various elements do not cohere. Third, implementation is not always effective, and monitoring often 
inadequate. The detrimental effect of these inadequacies is, finally, aggravated by economic recession. 
16. In spite of all that has been done this century in developed countries to set up and improve services to 
meet the needs of disabled people, there is a powerful and perhaps increasing weight of opinion that 
much of what happens is inadequate or inappropriate. Much of the critique does not apply only to 
questions of disability but forms part of a whole process of questioning the effectiveness of all social 
services; but evidently, insofar as disabled people are specially dependent on such services, the issues 
are of special importance to them. Much of the strength of the criticism of services which disabled 
people themselves have put forward comes from the corroboration it receives from those who are not 
themselves disabled — whether professionals, voluntary workers, parents or other well-wishers. The 
elements which make up the critique are these: 
— fragmentation 
services are organized in relation to specific needs so that at the same time a disabled person has to 
relate to a number of professionals or agencies, none of which is capable of looking at his problems 
as a whole or concerned to consider the impact of one intervention on other aspects of the client's 
life. The professionals themselves tend to be overspecialized, and to have little, or at best, inad­
equate contact with each other; coordinating activities are as a rule notoriously feeble, which is 
hardly surprising because typically there is no one person or agency in whom responsibility for 
coordination is invested. In the field of interprofessional cooperation, although as we have seen (') 
there are striking examples of good practice, the general standard falls far short of what is needed. 
Evidently this fragmentation effect can be especially acute during a transitional process when the 
disabled person passes in time from one agency or establishment to another (2), but all rehabili­
tation is a process in this sense and therefore subject to the dangers of discontinuity. 
(') See paragraph 9 above and footnote. 
(2) This point is emphasized in a study recently completed for the Commission by the United Kingdom's 
National Bureau for Handicapped Students, entitled 'Survey of the situation in Member States of the 
Community concerning the access of disabled students to and within establishments and programmes of 
post-compulsary education'. 
No C 136/14 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
— standardization 
there is nothing new or remarkable in the assertion that bureaucrats and even providers of primary 
services tend to simplify and categorize the problems of groups of clients and — at least in the eye 
of the client himself — tend to underestimate the importance of factors specific to the individual. 
Up to a point, this may be inevitable, and therefore best accepted; but from many disabled people, 
acceptance cannot be expected. For them the complex particularity of the effects of their im­
pairment is the very essence of their life, all day and every day: either solutions take this singularity 
into account or they are no use at all. It is no comfort whatever to know that most wheelchairs can 
get through a door if your wheelchair cannot. A perpetual problem is that of the agent — 
bureaucrat, professional, employer, hotel-keeper, whatever — who will adapt what he has on offer 
so far and no further. 
— paternalism 
if adequate in some respects, services may do too much in others. Above all for the mentally 
retarded, but not only for them, it may be much easier to find protection and support than to 
escape from them into a reasonable degree of necessary autonomy. Certain professions have 
established a reputation for being lordly and patronizing. From a certain point of view, all disabled 
people are by definition chronic patients, and traditionally patients must be given only that amount 
of information about their own condition which is judged to be for their own good by the pro­
fessionals. The normal human reaction to this benevolent tyranny is submission: so the disabled 
person 'delegates' or surrenders his human rights to others. 
17. Although, as has been seen, progress is being made in successfully encouraging more positive attitudes 
to disabled people among the general public; no one appears to disagree that the situation in this regard 
is still a long way from being satisfactory throughout our culture. The difficulties are generally much 
more severe with certain forms of impairment than with others — mental retardation, for example, 
paralysis affecting speech or facial expression, and (in a quite different, but equally intractable way) 
deafness; while mental illness, it must be admitted, involves special complications. The problem would 
appear to be a compound of a more or less rational apprehension that disabled people are likely to 
make inconvenient demands on us with quite irrational fears derived from an ignorance which has 
itself been fed by the system — the past tendency to set up segregated, often residential, establishments 
and separate services, which isolate people with disabilities from the rest of society. Moreover, the 
development of special services as well as tending to segregate disabled people has encouraged the 
belief that their needs are in fact being well met by the system and that therefore nothing further is 
required of the ordinary citizen in this regard than the payment of his taxes. Deinstitutionalization, in 
particular, and the whole integration movement of which it is a part, require a totally different 
approach, making a quite new demand on the local community to be aware of its disabled people and 
to take responsibility for them. There is therefore a vicious circle to be broken: the essential visibility of 
disabled people — on the street, in the theatre, at the pub — both depend on new attitudes and are a 
prerequisite for them. 
C. Positive factors concerning the employment of disabled people 
18. Disability being the universal, complex and profound phenomenon which it is, it has not been possible 
to regard the employment of disabled people without having first considered their general situation. 
Moving now from the general to the particular, it is best to start with some account of the positive 
factors in the employment field. Not to do this would be to give a quite wrong impression that all 
national legislation is more or less irrelevant and the whole battery of service provision largely 
ineffective. In fact in most Member States a major effort has been made to establish legislation to 
promote the economic integration of people with disabilities, and to set up or encourage services to 
facilitate this. There is also considerable evidence of current national activity to combat the bad effects 
of the present employment situation on disabled people. 
19. No category of legislative measure in this field has provoked more discussion than the 'quota' method, 
whereby employers are required to employ a certain percentage of disabled people by law. In fact, 
there is no such thing in the Community as one 'quota system': in one Member State, Denmark, there 
is no quota; among all other Member States the systems vary in every conceivable way — as to the size 
of firm affected, the difference of approach between the public and private sectors, the criteria for 
4.6.86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/15 
eligible disability, the percentage of disabled people to be taken on, the sanction in the case of default. 
Moreover there is no general evidence that quota systems are especially successful in achieving the aim 
of ensuring as far as possible full employment for disabled people, the purpose for which they were, in 
very different economic circumstances from the present, established. In most countries it does not seem 
that sanctions work, either being too weak to have any effect of too severe to be generally applicable 
in practice. Not suprisingly, there is no general expectation that, as things are, the record of 
effectiveness will improve in the foreseeable future. 
20. There would not then be much justification for including quota legislation as a positive factor were it 
not for the exceptional experience in the Federal Republic, where a much more highly developed 
system — a 'quote-levy-grant' system, in effect — has had very different results. In Germany all 
enterprises, whether public or private, employing more than 16 persons have to employ 6 % (') of 
persons with a disability assessed at 50 % working capacity or worse; failure to do this entails at 
present the payment of a levy of 100 DM per month for each post below the quota. The money so 
collected becomes a main source for the creation of employment support funds which are devoted to 
grants (for the adaptation of posts, for example) to employers satisfying or exceeding the quota and to 
provide follow-up assistance to disabled people in their working lives (2). No such system could be 
expected to work perfectly; but the German one does work to a far more than merely satisfactory 
degree. Although, on the most recent figures (1982), 75 % of employers liable did not satisfy the 
quota, a significant number exceeded it; the overall result is that nearly 77 % of the posts which should 
have been filled by disabled people under the statute were so filled, and that 5,9 % of all workers in 
the enterprises concerned were disabled to the very considerable extent required by the criteria. The 
great merit of the system is that it attacks by means of one mechanism both barriers to the employment 
of the disabled at once — the shortage of jobs and the shortage of financial resources to underpin 
rehabilitation services. It is also fundamental to the system that it refers to severely disabled people and 
applies to both public and private employers. 
21. Yet there is no evidence that Member States are planning to create from nothing a quota system on 
German lines, or to adapt and strengthen their present quota system on the German model. The 
opinion is often expressed that any such initiative would be counterproductive in present economic 
circumstances when so many non-disabled workers are unemployed, and that much more success 
would attend intensified programmes of advice, information and persuasion aimed at both sides of 
industry, complemented by financial incentives or compensations. In the United Kingdom it has been 
decided, after considerable debate, not to abolish a quota system which is generally regarded as 
unsuccessful. Instead there has been created alongside it a new official but voluntary code of good 
practice on the employment of disabled people, certainly intended to be the cornerstone of future 
policy and practice. The code has a number of advantages. It is a source of information, advice and 
reference as well as a prescription (albeit not obligatory). It applies not only to private firms but also to 
the public sector, which the United Kingdom quota system does not. It is in two parts, aiming at two 
levels: the policy level of directors and the practical level of line managers and of employees and their 
representatives. 
22. In the Netherlands also a new approach with some similar characteristics can be seen in measures now 
before the Parliament. Instead of a strengthened 5 % quota as once proposed, employers and trade 
unions will be required to cooperate to ensure that an equal opportunity for employment of disabled 
people is achieved in practice in all companies; in three years time, the government may impose a 
quota of 3 %-7 % on a given entreprise if necessary. It is evident therefore that there are a number of 
carefully prepared and constructive options which Member States can explore as models and whose 
relative effectiveness can and should be studied and compared at Community level in the years ahead. 
(') This is an average: the percentage can be varied, within the range 4-10 °/o depending on employers, 
regions and industries. In the public service, it may be as high as 12 %. 
(2) 60 % of the levy is retained by the Assistance Office of the Land concerned; 40 % goes to the Inter-
Region Programme for the Resettlement of Severely Handicapped Persons in Employment, Occupation 
and Society. 
No C 136/16 Official Journal of the European Communities 4. 6. 86 
23. The requirement for a steady and reliable source of funds to finance training and employment 
subsidies and services can be met by other means than a quota-levy-grant system. A good example is 
the Fonds National pour le Reclassement des Handicapes in Belgium. Resourced 'painlessly' by contri­
butions from the general public (notably by means of a premium on motor insurance ('), the fund is the 
means for ensuring as far as possible a reliable and even standard of rehabilitation services throughout 
the country. Its great strength is that it can contribute to the needs not only of rehabilitation centres 
but also of employers and of individual disabled people. In consequence the fund is not only a reliably 
resourced instrument of policy but also a flexible one. 
24. Nor is a quota system, however effective, anywhere regarded as a sole solution to all the problems of 
the employment of disabled people; the recognition of the need for coherent sets of measures, in which 
a quota may or may not play a part, appears to be gathering force. Recent measures in Germany 
envisage not merely some improvements in the quota scheme, but an increase in incentives for 
employers to train and engage disabled workers, a strenghtening of the provisions against unfair 
dismissal and of the role of the representative of disabled workers in companies, and revision of the 
favourable holiday allowance for the disabled; to this must be added the exceptional strength and 
quality of the provision for the vocational rehabilitation and training of both young and adult disabled 
persons throughout the Federal Republic. 
25. Current initiatives in France also give evidence of a comprehensive approach, covering the acceptance 
of disabled trainees into ordinary training situations, more flexible arrangements for the recruitment of 
disabled employees into the public service and a number of schemes for financial incentives to 
employers. These comprise support for individual vocational rehabilitation contracts, for the costs of 
adapting work places and of additional staff and for the training of disabled apprentices, as well as a 
scheme of recruitment grants over three years for employers who engage to recruit 4 % of disabled 
workers and to promote rehabilitation and vocational training, and a programme of grants for disabled 
people setting up their own businesses. The response of employers can be seen for example in the 
appointment of staff responsible for the recruitment of disabled workers in the human rights direc­
torates of large companies, and in the priority given to the employment of the disabled by ETHIC, the 
grouping for the purpose of reciprocal management support of 2 500 small and medium-sized 
companies. 
26. In the United Kingdom, similarly, the code of good practice is not an isolated phenomenon. By regu­
lation, employers of more than 250 workers are required to include an account of their policy for the 
employment of disabled people in the annual director's report. The motivation of employers is 
developed by means of awards under the 'fit for work' scheme and help is being provided to them by 
the setting up of a disablement advisory service to complement the specialized and general employment 
services which already exist. Individual rehabilitation plans drawing on the full range of available 
services are being devised in areas where the service of an employment rehabilitation centre cannot be 
obtained, and increasing encouragement is being given to the creation of sheltered industrial groups as 
an alternative to traditional sheltered employment. 
27. Other examples could of course be given to illustrate the progress in Member States not only in 
developing useful specific measures but in confronting the problems of coordination and balanced 
provision throughout the country. The purpose here is merely to indicate, with a few examples, that 
such initiatives exist and are in many countries relatively well established. The contribution of the 
private sector, sometimes involving useful collaboration with public authorities, is an important factor 
in all Member States. Many rehabilitation centres are in private hands, although receiving financial 
support from the State. Of the French preparation and follow-up teams in many areas, some are under 
private, others under public, management. In France also the GIRPEH (Groupements Inter-
professionnels Regionaux pour la Promotion des Personnes Handicapees) play an important part in the 
employment field; innovation, as instanced by the pathway scheme in the United Kingdom for the 
economic integration of mentally retarded people, is sometimes pioneered by private initiatives. 
28. Many disabled people, including young people, have benefited from improvements during the last two 
decades in training provision as well as in guidance, placement and follow-up services. Progress has 
been made in both the range and quality of training available; in some countries the increase in the 
number of mentally retarded people receiving serious vocational preparation is considerable. More 
flexible methods, for example modular training systems, have been introduced, and more possibilities 
exist for self-assessment and active participation by the trainee. Meanwhile, following on from the 
(l) This contributes more than 50 °/o of the fund; other sources include fire insurance and industrial 
accident insurance. 
4.6.86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/17 
post-war growth of well-resourced specialized institutions, there is now an increasing range of 
'integrated' training opportunities in normal courses and establishments open to all trainees, disabled 
and non-disabled alike. All the most significant of these developments are well represented in the 
Community's network of rehabilitation centres which is concerned with both physically and mentally 
disabled trainees and which is now considerably increasing its capacity to disseminate the results of 
innovation and the experience of good practice. 
29. Nor are all the trends in the job-market itself unfavourable. The growing demands for shorter working 
hours, the interest in shared work schemes, increased opportunity and better conditions for part-time 
work, more and better offers of early retirement — these are all trends which may be particularly 
attractive to some of the disabled population. It is generally recognized, too, that computerization will 
entail a general improvement in the conditions of many working situations, from which disabled people 
may especially benefit. The production of electronic components already offers suitable employment to 
disabled people. More important still, the technological revolution is offering both vastly improved aids 
to employment notably in the office sector (voice-synthesizers for blind secretaries, for example), and 
new specific job opportunities using the computers themselves (as programmers, for example, or 
programme operators), whether within a normal working environment of by means of 'telework'. 
There may well be expanding rather than diminishing opportunities also in sectors unconnected with 
the new technologies, tourist, forestry and horticultural industries for example. Most important of all 
for disabled people may be initiatives of a different kind in which the Community is playing a leading 
part — schemes to bring about a social guarantee for young people, to encourage the formation of 
small and medium-sized enterprises and to promote local employment initiatives. 
30. Of enormous importance to many disabled people — most frequently but by no means exclusively the 
mentally retarded — has been the opportunity for gainful occupation offered by the various systems of 
sheltered employment. Generalizations about sheltered workshops can be dangerous since their 
purpose, organization, and above all, the population for whom they cater vary considerably not only 
between different Member States but also within one country. Typically, sheltered workshops are 
subsidized — not the only enterprises of which that may be said. They have to compete in the sale of 
their products in the open market, achieving laid down productivity levels in the process ('). For many 
thousands of disabled people they have offered and continue to offer the principal effective contact 
with society, in some cases the only significant one. 
31. Three problems however, it must be admitted, beset the sheltered workshops as traditionally 
understood. They have tended to be concentrated on light manufacture without high technology, and 
the market for their goods is increasingly hazardous; they cost governments money at a time when 
public expenditure has to be reduced; there is a general feeling that what they have to offer in the way 
of integration is generally less than people are nowadays looking for. In theory the last point could be 
met insofar as the workshops were able to develop, at least for some of their members, a more typically 
transitional role — that of a flexibly organized staging-post between rehabilitation or special education 
and the world of open employment. In practice, however, it is not easy to reconcile the idea of 
continuous and planned loss of his best workers with the workshop manager's production quota, and 
the endeavour to solve that problem by means of premiums may not commend itself to governments in 
present circumstances. On the one hand, therefore, the problems confronting the workshops are 
admittedly formidable; on the other hand, the demand and need for posts in them in a period of 
recession is growing rather than declining and it is likely that they will continue to be an important 
element in the employment scene for disabled people in the foreseeable future. 
32. Two sorts of initiatives are already being undertaken to overcome the difficulties which beset sheltered 
employment. One is aimed to improve the potential of sheltered workshops as such by introducing new 
forms of activity, as alternatives or substitutes for the more traditional manufacturing or assembling 
processes: commercial services using computers is one promising area and intensive horticulture 
another. The other initiatives are all endeavours to preserve the supported environment (though not the 
security of tenure) which the traditional workshops offer while at the same time integrating the 
disabled people into normal firms and reducing the cost of the whole exercise. The schemes for 
individual 'protected posts' in Denmark and the 'sheltered industrial groups' already mentioned in the 
United Kingdom are examples of methods for combatting the problem of segregation while at the 
same time avoiding unattainable levels of expenditure. 
(l) Some workshops have limited 'privileges' on the market (special labels indicating their origin, right to 
first tender, for ex'ample). Many have no such advantage and the trend appears to be against this. 
No C 136/18 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
33. A quite different example of the same general type of initiative is afforded by the creation of 
cooperatives; this is of exceptional interest, since it is a good example of an approach which is 
recommended at Community level as part of the general campaign to promote job creation and which 
has been proved to be exceptionally suitable for disabled people. The great majority of these 
developments have been in Italy, where traditional sheltered workshops have not been widely 
established. There is a strong preference for cooperatives which bring disabled people together with the 
non-disabled. The problems of launching the endeavours and finding markets for the products are 
certainly severe. But, in Italy at least, there have not been serious problems in relation to trade unions 
as far as wage levels are concerned, while the contribution that cooperatives, in favouring integration 
and enhanced responsibility, have already made to independent living is already established and must 
have considerable potential for the future. 
34. That the employment predicament of disabled people is grave and urgent will be shown in the next 
section. If there was nothing to build on, no chance of effectively fighting back, then there would be 
no point in trying, no justification for a Community initiative: we should do better to leave disabled 
people who want jobs to get them if they can, and rely on disability pensions as the only instrument of 
policy. The object of this section has been to show that the situation is not at all like that. On the 
evidence, there is a great deal on which to build, on the side of measures and services, even, too, on 
the side of the market. There is, therefore, not only a justification for the Community to reinforce its 
efforts, but no excuse for not doing so. 
D. Problems affecting the employment of disabled people 
35. One aim of the statistical study on the employment of disabled people which the Commission's Sta­
tistical Office conducted in 1981 (') was to establish to what extent 'the working population which is 
disabled suffered more than any other social group from unemployment and the economic recession in 
general'. The conclusion of the study is, however, that 'most countries do not have statistical tools 
which enable this question to be answered'. Inevitably, therefore, precise numerical evidence is scrappy 
as well as being generally out of date, and the poor quality of the evidence is itself proof of the need 
for Community initiatives to promote research in this field. Such evidence as there is, however, fully 
corroborates the universal and firm belief that disabled people, in common with other disadvantaged 
groups, have suffered and are still suffering the effects of recession considerably more severely than the 
average, a view which is in particular also held by those in ministries or governmental agencies who are 
specially concerned with this problem. 
36. In the United Kingdom in 1978 the unemployment rate for disabled people was reckoned at 14 % as 
against a national rate of 5,5 %. In Denmark, in 1980 17,5 °/o of disabled job-seekers were unplaced at 
a time when the overall unemployment rate was running at about 7 %. In the same year the French 
Ministry of Labour estimated the unemployment rate for disabled people to be as high as 30 %, three 
times that of other workers; in Belgium also the figure is estimated at 25 % at least. In the 
Netherlands, for three years, 1978 to 1980, at a time when the overall unemployment rate was similar 
to that in Denmark an average of only 11,5% of disabled people registered with employment 
exchange were placed in jobs each year. 
37. Meanwhile, in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1976 and 1980, while overall unemployment 
fell by 32 °/o, the unemployment of severely disabled workers rose by 60 %. Since 1980 in Member 
States the decline in the employment of disabled people has been particularly severe. The Irish 
National Rehabilitation Board has recorded a 31 % fall in the placement of disabled people between 
1982 and 1983, while in the United Kingdom the Manpower Services Commission reckons the long 
unemployment rate of disabled workers to be twice that of others. In Germany in 1983, 48 °/o of 
severely disabled people not at work had been unemployed for more than one year, the average period 
of unemployment for them being 16 months compared with 10 months for all unemployed workers. 
Both in Ireland and the United Kingdom, moreover, there is a marked drop in the number of referrals 
of disabled people to employment services, variously explained as due either to dissatisfaction with the 
specific services offered or to a more general disillusionment in face of the economic situation as a 
whole. To all this must be added the problem of under-employment, all authorities being agreed that 
many employed disabled people, among them conspiciously those with hearing impairments, are 
working at levels well below their capacity or potential. 
(') See paragraph 1(1) and footnote. 
4.6.86 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 136/19 
38. The causes which underlie this problem may be set out as follows: 
(a) Except in the Federal Republic of Germany, national quota legislation, introduced at a time of 
economic growth, has failed to protect disabled workers at a time of economic recession. 
(b) Moreover, the other principal form of direct legislative action has been the establishment by law of 
certain specific jobs as reserved occupations for disabled people — for example lift operators and 
car-park attendants in the United Kingdom. The problem here is that this approach, welcome and 
appropriate certainly when it was introduced, is now out of harmony with attitudes as they have 
developed among disabled people and their families, the professionals themselves and even the 
general public. Any tendency to identify disabled people with certain occupations, above all with 
tasks which are somewhat lowly and undemanding of skill or training, is generally felt now to 
smack of discrimination in the bad sense and to be contrary to the human dignity of the individual. 
The strategy of reserved occupations does not appear to have a future. 
(c) In spite of the examples which exist of high-quality training in well-resourced establishments, 
whether specialized or not, the overall picture of the training provision for disabled people is one 
of basic inadequacy and often limited resources for adaptation, so that there is both an increasing 
mismatch between the skills disabled people have to offer and the few vacancies available, and an 
over-provision of low level training which does not equip disabled people for available jobs. 
(d) Whether because of a lack of training opportunities, or because of difficulties in undertaking 
training which are directly related to a specific disability, a considerably greater than average pro­
portion of disabled workers are unskilled with little or no prospect of on-the-job training; they are, 
therefore, exceptionally vulnerable to redundancy in a period of both recession and technological 
change. 
(e) Specific technological changes may entail serious loss of employment opportunities which have 
been particularly helpful to people with certain disabilities. Automation for production purposes 
has already reduced occupations in secondary industry suitable for a number of disabled people 
including those with mental impairments. Another important example is afforded by telephone 
exchange systems, until now an extremely important area for the employment to blind people. New 
exchanges are increasingly visual in their operation, and if they are not originally designed so as to 
be easily adaptable for the needs of blind operators the cost of later adaptation may be insup­
portable so that vital jobs for blind people may be lost on a substantial scale. The means for 
effectively coordinating action to prevent this trend do not exist. 
(f) Progress in establishing the necessary physical environment — housing, access, transport — to 
support the employment of disabled people (particularly, but not only, those with physical 
disabilities) has been generally too slow and too sporadic; this can entail additional insuperable 
limitations to the employment opportunities available. 
(g) There is a perhaps widespread belief that the cost of vocational rehabilitation, a desirable 'extrava­
gance' in times of relative plenty, simply cannot be afforded in a period of economic restraint. The 
employer may believe that, for every disabled employee, he will have to invest more in order to get 
less return — at a time when manning is likely to be a major preoccupation. The only well-known 
study on this subject refutes this opinion: according to the Du Pont Survey ('), rehabilitation pays 
off. But the American situation is different: in the United States the employer (at least through his 
insurer) may well be paying pensions as well as wages. Governments, nonetheless, must count the 
social cost: among Government experts in the Comunity countries, whether pensions cost more 
than effective rehabilitation is a disputed question. As long, however, as it is widely believed by 
employers that taking on disabled people is not something they can afford now, the problem exists 
and will affect with special severity young disabled people looking for their first job. Where the 
motivation of employers to resettle their own workers who become disabled may be in decline, it is 
evident that disabled workers looking for a job from outside the company will have greatly 
reduced chances. 
(h) Negative attitudes towards questions of physical appearance and speech defects affecting certain 
disabilities may well be still widespread among the general public — certainly, which is quite as 
important, they are a prominent feature of what many employers believe about the general public. 
This, without doubt, acts as a serious hidden barrier to the recruitment of disabled people into jobs 
in the tertiary sector of the economy (commerce, tourism, office-work, personal services) for which 
they may otherwise be particularly well-suited, and which probably constitute one of the most 
important areas of opportunity of the future. 
(') 'Equal to the task', the Du Pont Survey of Employment of the Handicapped, 1981. 
No C 136/20 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.6.86 
(i) The complex relationship between rehabilitation measures and financial benefit systems does not 
always work coherently, and can even operate as a disincentive to employment. The problem is not 
that the mere existence of substantial disability benefit provision operates against employment 
aspiration in a global way. If economic recession were to continue for a long period, this might be 
a consequence; until now, however, the principle that 'active rehabilitation' takes precedence over 
'disability pension' appears to have been operated, on the whole, effectively in the Member States: 
disability benefit is not, for example, generally paid to a person who after a successful rehabili­
tation programme refuses a suitable job offer. The real difficulties are more specific, and concern 
the relationship between disability benefits and certain kinds of employment patterns which can be 
of special interest to disabled people — part-time work above all but also 'trial' work periods and 
gradual taking up of work or return to it. In some Member States a disabled person receiving 
benefit may simply become worse off by taking up part-time work, or during a period of gradual 
entry to work. There may also be powerful disincentives to otherwise useful 'trial' work schemes, 
since it may be difficult, if the trial does not succeed, to retrieve a benefit once lost, and at least 
there may be detrimental delays. Lack of flexibility in the systems can create special problems in 
relation to the patterns of mental illness; other disabled people ask for a definition of 'partial 
incapacity' as offering the options they need. In all these respects, however, there are also examples 
of good, flexible practice in some Member States and, subject to financial considerations, ther is no 
reason why progress should not be made in meeting these problems throughout the Community. 
(j) While there are widespread efforts to engage the support of employers by means of financial 
subsidies and programmes of information and advice, the take-up by employers of adaptation 
allowances can be disappointing. Moreover there is little evidence of concerted efforts to engage 
the interest and influence of the trade union movement in support of the employment of disabled 
people. 
(k) With notable exceptions, the participation of disabled people themselves, at national, regional, 
local or enterprise level, in the taking or implementation of decisions which directly concern their 
economic integration, is not a prominent feature of the European Community scene.