There is a great discrepancy between the omnipresent demands for inclusion published by official bodies and ministries and the actual participation of people with disabilities in social life. The policy cultivates the rhetoric of inclusion in programmatic and conceptual formulations, while at the same time maintaining or even expanding separative institutions for those that are considered not to be eligible for inclusion in the fields of education and employment (see competence centres in education and ‘inclusion’ in sheltered workshops, or the persistent exclusion of persons under guardianship from the right to vote). Inclusion is viewed primarily from an economic and neo-liberal perspective, without questioning the basic principles of a meritocratic society oriented towards proven performance. Performance appraisals, especially in the area of education and work, are largely based on the performance demanded and shown without sufficiently taking into account the way the performance is achieved. In the educational sector, the incompatibility of introducing educational standards and achieving full inclusion is not recognised. Separating establishments are renamed to inclusive settings without any fundamental reorientation. The former regional special schools for pupils with cognitive impairments were re-branded as competence centres for intellectual development. With the introduction of the competence centres, no longer official figures are published regarding pupils who are taught separately. There are also no official figures on how many pupils were assigned to the competence centres from regular schools and vice versa. It is therefore impossible to give comparative statistical evidence of the extent to which inclusive education has currently developed in Luxembourg. With regard to employment, the same problems remain as those already identified in the first Action Plan. People with disabilities experience considerable difficulty in finding a job in the mainstream labour market. Unemployment is ...