Legal capacity – ETR

What to wear?
Where to live?
Who to vote for?

These are all decisions
that we need to make.

Sometimes the decisions we make
are not good for us.

But everyone should have the right
to be wrong.

A lot of people think
that people with intellectual disabilities
need to be protected.

This is because
they could make the wrong decisions.

Then they are put under guardianship
and they lose their legal capacity.

This is very bad,
and it’s against
what the UN CRPD says.

The UN CRPD says
that people with disabilities
should have equal legal capacity
like everyone else.

Inclusion Europe
wants countries to change their law
so that we will no longer have full guardianship.

Instead of that
we should have supported decision-making.

Supported decision-making means
that people with intellectual disabilities
have someone who supports them
in making decisions.

With supported decision-making
people with intellectual disabilities
can keep their rights.

Every European country has different laws
on legal capacity
for people under guardianship.

In the last years,
many countries have made better laws.

But there are still many things to change.

To move from guardianship
to supported decision-making
we need:

• more people working on this
• more support
  for people with intellectual disabilities
• better understanding
  of what supported decision-making is.

Legal capacity
and voting rights
are also topics we talk about
in our campaign for the European elections 2019.