The UN Disability Rights Convention and EU Fundamental Rights

Abstract

This article examines the role to be played by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in the protection of migrants with disabilities within the EU, in view of the apparent invisibility of this population within existing frameworks. It argues that the CRPD’s dual role as a core UN human rights treaty and an international agreement concluded by the EU, which occupies an “integral part” of the EU legal order, interacts with pre-existing (homegrown) sources of fundamental rights obligations within EU law to produce a ‘disability fundamental rights framework’. Accordingly, the CRPD’s substantive protection should act to determine the minimum standard of protection afforded to migrants with disabilities within the EU, without prejudicing the possibility of EU law offering more extensive protection. In so doing, this article demonstrates the emancipatory potential of a ‘disability fundamental rights framework’ vis-à-vis a specific category of (unwanted) migrants and which follows from a principled interpretation of the CRPD’s interaction with EU fundamental rights.