The report People with Disabilities in Portugal – Human Rights Indicators 2025 was presented by the Observatory on Disability and Human Rights (ODDH – ISCSP-ULisboa) on December 10, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The public session took place at ISCSP, in Sala Lisboa, and was also available online via the Teams platform.
The 9th edition of the ODDH Report analyzed the current landscape of human rights for people with disabilities in Portugal, based primarily on official statistical data published by Eurostat, as well as national administrative sources. In this edition, the analyses focused on Portugal and Europe, aiming whenever possible to understand the country’s position relative to its peers in the European Union across the various indicators studied.
This comparative analysis shows how much progress is still needed in Portugal to approach the European standard. In education, employment, and living conditions, Portuguese people with disabilities still show some less favorable indicators:
- A poverty rate after social transfers (22.2% in 2024) above the European average (20.0% in 2024), and rising since 2022 (+2.2 pp);
- A long-term unemployment rate (12 months or more) higher than average (54.3% in PT) and moving in the opposite direction to the reduction observed in Europe (+4.5 pp since 2022 in PT, vs. -8.1 pp EU average);
- A school dropout rate (23.6%) and a proportion of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEETs) – 32.4% in PT – both higher than the EU 27 average (school dropout rate in EU = 20.0%; NEET rate = 31.4%).
In other indicators, however, the data are more positive:
- The employment rate of people with disabilities in Portugal (64.4% in 2023) has been rising and is above the European average (54.6%);
- The employment gap between people with and without disabilities in Portugal is the fourth lowest in the EU 27;
- The number of students with disabilities in higher education continues to grow in the country, although it remains below the EU27 average (35.5% in PT) and far from the 2030 target for Europe (45%).
Portuguese state investment in social protection for people with disabilities also remains below the European Union average – in 2023, Portugal spent 1.49% of its GDP in this area, compared to the EU Member States’ average of 1.88%. In terms of Purchasing Power Parity per capita, an indicator that equalizes purchasing power across economies, spending in Portugal was 448.69, well below the EU average of 725.28.
A longitudinal analysis highlights a continued contraction of social protection spending on disability, particularly in Portugal (-0.33 pp compared to 2015), but also at the European level (-0.1 pp compared to 2015). As a result, the gap between Portuguese public spending and the EU average more than doubled between 2015 (0.16 pp) and 2023 (0.39 pp).