Disability as an Overlooked Litmus Test of EU Rule of Law and Democratic Responsiveness
(c) Piotr Banasik
Magda(lena) Szarota is a scholar and award-winning cross-sector advocate whose work bridges policy, disability, gender, human rights, and innovation. She earned her PhD at Lancaster University (UK) and received multiple scholarships, including one at Yale University. She collaborates as an expert and strategist with institutions across the Global North and Global South, including through her work in civil-war-torn Nepal. She also serves as Disability Ombudsperson for Humanity in Action’s transatlantic consortium. Recognized as a pioneer of the disabled women’s movement in post-socialist Eastern Europe, Magda co-founded Poland’s first association of disabled women in 2004. She is actively engaged in disability-policy advocacy at the European Union and United Nations levels. In 2026, she was appointed to the Advisory Panel on the Political Participation of Persons with Disabilities of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR). For her contributions to advancing disability justice, she was named Ambassador for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and received the Risk-Taker Award. Beyond this work, Magda is an exhibited and published art photographer. She is currently working on a series focused on disabled women leaders.
Disability as an Overlooked Litmus Test of EU Rule of Law and Democratic Responsiveness
This project examines disability rights as an overlooked litmus test of the European Union's rule of law performance and democratic responsiveness. Nearly a quarter of EU adults, around 90 million people, experience long-standing activity limitations, yet disability remains weakly mainstreamed across EU legislative scrutiny and oversight. This is not merely a policy gap. Where accessibility, reasonable accommodation, and access to remedies are denied, the rule of law fails in a strictly constitutional sense: rights binding under the CRPD, ratified by the EU, are not effective in practice. The project investigates two interconnected failures: why disability remains marginal despite binding CRPD obligations, a large affected constituency, and a growing body of EU disability law; and why governance solutions developed within the disability movement have not been absorbed into institutional routines. As I argue, both failures share a structural driver: the lived experience gap. Without personal connection to disability, decision-makers diffuse responsibility rather than claim ownership, as illustrated by the near-total abandonment of the European Parliament's CRPD Network meeting in early 2026. The project therefore asks: How can the EU close the lived experience gap and embed disability rights and CRPD obligations more effectively within its rule-of-law and democratic accountability mechanisms?
