Campaigners condemn ruling on aid for carer

Date: 14/11/1996

By Simon Coss

DISABLED rights campaigners have attacked a European Court of Justice decision denying a German woman financial assistance to care for her paraplegic husband because she was unemployed.

“This judgement sends an extremely negative message about attitudes to both disabled people and their carers. Providing assistance for a disabled person should not be something which automatically falls on the spouse. This ruling goes against the principle of personal choice for both carers and the disabled,” said Diana Sutton of the European Parliament's disability intergroup.

The woman at the centre of the case, Bruna Züchner, applied for financial help to pay for professional therapeutic care after her husband was severely injured in an accident.

The German authorities refused her application because she was unemployed and therefore able to provide the care herself.

Züchner challenged the decision at the ECJ claiming it violated EU rules on the equal treatment of men and women, but judges at the Luxembourg-based Court upheld the original German ruling.

The case hinged on whether Züchner should be considered as part of the 'working population'. If so, she would have been covered by a 1978 EU directive on equal treatment and might well have been eligible for financial assistance.

But the Court ruled that the directive did not apply to “people who are not working and are not seeking work”, and said that to include members of a family working for the benefit of other family members under the definition of the working population would “indefinitely extend the scope of the directive” beyond its original intentions.

Sutton argues that the judgement effectively binds Züchner to her home and severely limits her chances of re-entering the labour market.

“Some people choose to care for disabled relatives, but they should not be forced to do so. This woman should have the possibility to look for any job she wants,” she said.

Sutton added: “The sort of care required in these cases is often very complex and can often be most effectively provided by a qualified care assistant. Family members, how-ever well intentioned, are not always best placed to look after severely disabled relatives.”

The European Commission supported the woman's case, but the UK and Germany both favoured the Court's interpretation of the rules.

Ironically, legislation already exists in both these member states which grants allowances for disabled people to hire care assistants under certain circumstances. However, as they stand, these laws are discretionary and there is no automatic right to paid assistance.