News from our campaigns

Accessibility of Lifts

After consulting the Commission for Liaison with the EU and the Road Safety and Accessible Transport working group, as well as our partners ANEC and EDF, on 28 February we sent our technical position paper to the European Commission explaining why we feel the revised EU standard for accessible lifts (CEN 81-70:2018) does not meet the test of universal design. In the paper, we ask the Commission, if it nevertheless decides to proceed with the publication in the Official Journal, to do so with a restrictive notice to show that certain clauses of the standard do not provide a presumption of conformity with the legislation. Furthermore, we invite the European Parliament to make use of its powers of Formal Objection. Incidentally, we argue that it would be appropriate to include the lifts accessibility requirements of EN 81-70 in the lifts safety requirements of EN 81-20, as the latter is much more widely respected by the industry in practice.

Marrakesh Treaty

In the EU, still missing so far are the national measures of implementation of the Treaty for the following 5 countries: Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal.

Outside the EU: no new ratification or accession to the Treaty elsewhere in Europe.

On 28 February, we participated in an international conference in Podgorica (Montenegro) on the Treaty and its benefits for Blind and partially sighted persons. The conference was part of the project “Easier Way to the ratification of the Marrakech Treaty in the Western Balkan Countries” funded by EBU through the Solidarity Fund programme, in partnership with our member organisations in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Republic of Srpska. The conference was attended by representatives of the Montenegro Minister of Culture. The event was covered on Twitter.

European Accessibility Act

The announced date for the plenary to vote on the text is 14 March. After that, the Council’s approval in turn of the agreement would mean that the text is adopted.

European elections 2019

After its approval by the Board on 2 February, the EBU Statement on the European elections was released on 20 February, Word Social Justice Day and just over 3 months ahead of the elections.

Letters were sent to the presidents and lead candidates of all 10 EU-level political parties, and they are being targeted on Twitter as well. We will be collecting their replies.

Our statement is also progressively declined on Twitter through a set of 10 “flyers” corresponding to the 10 demands. We have provided national models of this, that our members on Twitter can use to tweet in their own national languages and to target their own contacts at national level.