There will be a EU-wide disabled card that also serves as a European disabled parking card. Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Member States have agreed on this.
The letter A can be added to the European disability card for disabled people who are also entitled to support by a personal assistant on public transport. The card will be provided with a QR code to prevent counterfeiting and fraud.
The European Disability Card is issued and renewed free of charge by the Member States, except in the event of loss or damage. The EU countries may charge an administration fee.
About 87 million people in Europe live with some form of disability. They regularly encounter obstacles when traveling and staying in other European countries because their disability status is not equally recognized everywhere.
In recent years, the European Commission had already piloted the harmonization of existing national disability cards from eight countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Malta, Romania and Slovenia.
So far, each EU country has its own rules for the use of a disabled parking card. The new card is also valid in Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
Intensive negotiations on the final form started on January 17 and were successfully concluded within less than a month with today's agreement. At a technical level, work will continue to finalize the legal texts and the multilingual dedicated website.