Disability Inclusion in EU Youth Policies – Assessing the Reinforced Youth Guarantee in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Poland

This policy brief assesses how disability inclusion is addressed within the Reinforced Youth Guarantee (RYG) and the broader legislative framework in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland. The analysis shows that EU-level commitments have strengthened the visibility of young persons with disabilities within youth employment policies, but national implementation remains uneven. Across the four countries, disability is formally recognised as a vulnerability factor; however, access to tailored, accessible and continuous school-to-work support is still limited. A recurrent implementation gap emerges between policy recognition and effective inclusion. Young persons with disabilities continue to face barriers or uneven opportunities linked to inaccessible education and training pathways, weak personalised support, fragmented coordination between employment, education and social services, and persistent labour market discrimination. These barriers are reinforced by territorial inequalities and by limited data and monitoring systems capable of tracking disability disaggregated outcomes within Youth Guarantee (YG) schemes