Ms Brenda King, president of the European Economic and Social Committee Section for Employment and Social Affairs on the 18th June 2008, addressed the Polish Parliament Sejm and called for action to tap a potentially large labour pool by integrating people with disabilities into the labour market.

At the external meeting of the Sejm's Commission for Social Policy and Family in Wroclaw held and chaired by Deputy Sławomir Piechota and attended by Rafał Dutkiewicz, Mayor of Wroclaw, Ms King presented a long standing EESC position on European disability policies. She stressed that workplaces must be more disability-friendly, creating new jobs suitable for people who have a right tojoin the labour force. Europe should have a disability-specific EU directive banning discrimination at the workplace and providing for improved implementation of the 2000 Employment directive, as well as greater involvement of national disability associations in drawing up reform plans in the context of the revised Lisbon agenda.

Ms King emphasized that the European Commission and particularly the Member States should develop a set of indicators and quantitative targets to be achieved by each Member State in policy areas for disabled people and give more focus to compiling reliable and coherent data which is crucial for building up a coherent policy and evaluating both its short term and long term results.

Those actions should be underpinned by greater efforts by all concerned to combat the many continuing forms of discrimination and disadvantage suffered only disabled people, particularly with regard to access to education, the labour market and continuing training. In this context, the Committee has stated that activities during 2010, The Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, should y contribute positively to the goal of equal opportunities.