By Carine Marzin, Chair, EBU Campaigns Network
After a long campaign we were pleased to see Rapporteur Dita Charanzova MEP and the Dutch Presidency finally reach a political agreement on the directive at the beginning of May, a major milestone in our campaign to ensure accessibility of public websites and apps!
The political agreement was subsequently adopted by an overwhelming majority in the European Parliament's Internal Market Committee (IMCO) on 23 May, with 31 votes in favour, 2 against and 2 abstentions. The agreement was also approved by the Council's Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) on behalf of EU governments, on 25 May - read COREPER press release
A Dutch Presidency briefing addressed to ministers in the Telecoms Council, who met on 26 May, confirms that the directive's scope will cover all websites and mobile applications of all public sector bodies, as well as their intranet systems.
The political agreement still has to be finalised, a procedure which requires legal and linguistic scrutiny but the draft text has now been made public - see
http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9464-2016-INIT/en/pdf
The approval procedure will be complete after a plenary vote in the European Parliament – this is expected to take place in the autumn.
Member States will then have 21 months to transpose the directive into their national law.