Plenary vote on European Accessibility Act: several steps in the right direction

Today, the European Parliament voted in its plenary session on the European Accessibility Act, a European Commission proposal which intends to improve access of persons with disabilities to a range of products and services. BusinessEurope issued a Joint Industry Statement with several other industry organisations ahead of the vote.

BusinessEurope Director General Markus J. Beyrer said: “We support better access to goods and services for persons with disabilities. In the context of the European Accessibility Act we have stressed that it should be future-proof, allow for innovation and be implementable on the ground. While in many areas the text adopted in the plenary is an improvement to the European Commission’s proposal, in some respects the final text is likely to leave significant legal uncertainty, which is disadvantageous for companies.”

BusinessEurope supports the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee report from May this year. While important parts of the report have been upheld in the vote, we are concerned in particular about the amendments relating to the inclusion of public procurement and the accessibility requirements from the annexes. We call on the Council to make further improvements in these areas.

Read our previous position on the European Accessibility Act here.