Enforcing EU equality law through collective redress: lagging behind? (original) (raw)
Related papers
“Taking Stock of Twenty Years of EU Equality Law and Policymaking and Looking Ahead”
International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 2018
The development of equality legislation at European Union (EU) level is one of the major achievements of the European integration project, and its role in driving advances in equality law and policy in many EU member states is undeniable. Year 2019 will mark two decades since the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force in 1999. The latter introduced former Article 13 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (current Article 19 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), thereby expanding the legal base for adopting EU legislation to six new anti-discrimination grounds, namely: race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, and sexual orientation. This anniversary provides an auspicious moment for not only taking stock of accomplishments and critically reflecting on the past, but also for moving forward. Indeed, the recent adoption of the European Pillar of Social Rights (‘the Pillar’) suggests that EU equality law and policy could now be at a pivotal p...
Taking EU Equality Law to the Next Level: In Search of Coherence
European Labour Law Journal
EU employment equality law is the product of fifty years of law-making. This gradual evolution has led to fragmentation and differences in the protection afforded to protected grounds, often referred to as a ‘hierarchy of discrimination grounds’. This paper argues that human dignity is one of the underlying values of EU equality law, and therefore, the existence of a ‘hierarchy’ is not deliberate, but rather the accidental product of progressive waves of legislative evolution. It is thus submitted that EU equality law should keep evolving to achieve a coherent approach to address discrimination. This requires a legal framework that is logical, consistent and aligned with international human rights instruments. On this basis, the paper discusses two proposals to improve the coherence of EU employment equality law, namely, explicitly prohibiting gender identity discrimination and embracing reasonable accommodation for religious practices through a broad interpretation of the concept o...
Three Ideas: The Scope of EU Law Protecting Against Discrimination
The issue of when EU law applies, its scope, is obviously important and yet it has no clear answer. Two extreme positions are that EU law has a general scope, which it does not, and that all EU law provisions have different scopes, which clarifies nothing. This article explores the middle ground by seeking to identify underlying ideas capable of explaining when different EU law provisions apply on the national level and why seemingly similar provisions differ in scope. The article studies under what conditions an individual seeking protection against discrimination can invoke EU law on the national level and concludes that EU law provisions preventing discrimination differ greatly in scope but that such differences can be explained by the fact that they are based on different ideas: the idea of the internal market, the idea of actor equivalence, or the idea of a Europe without borders.
EU Anti-Discrimination Law Beyond Gender (Foreword and Front Matter)
Hart Publishing, 2018
The EU has slowly but surely developed a solid body of equality law that prohibits different facets of discrimination. While the Union had initially developed anti-discrimination norms that served only the commercial rationale of the common market, focusing on nationality (of a Member State) and gender as protected grounds, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) supplied five additional prohibited grounds of discrimination to the EU legislative palette, in line with a much broader egalitarian rationale. In 2000, two EU Equality Directives followed, one focusing on race and ethnic origin, the other covering the remaining four grounds introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam, namely religion, sexual orientation, disabilities and age. Eighteen years after the adoption of the watershed Equality Directives, it seems timely to dedicate a book to their limits and prospects, to look at the progress made, and to revisit the rise of EU anti-discrimination law beyond gender. This volume sets out to capture the striking developments and shortcomings that have taken place in the interpretation of relevant EU secondary law. Firstly, the book unfolds an up-to-date systematic reappraisal of the five 'newer' grounds of discrimination, which have so far received mostly fragmented coverage. Secondly, and more generally, the volume captures how and to what extent the Equality Directives have enabled or, at times, prevented the Court of Justice of the European Union from developing even broader and more refined anti-discrimination jurisprudence. Thus, the book offers a glimpse into the past, present and – it is hoped – future of EU anti-discrimination law as, despite all the flaws in the Union's 'Garden of Earthly Delights', it offers one of the highest standards of protection in comparative anti-discrimination law.
A Bird’s Eye View on EU Anti-Discrimination Law: The Impact of the 2000 Equality Directives
German Law Journal, 2019
The year 2000 marked the birth of EU anti-discrimination law as a field in its own right, with the adoption of two major Equality Directives. They extended the prohibition of discrimination with five additional grounds and expanded the material scope of equality regulation. Having reached its eighteenth birthday in the year 2018, EU anti-discrimination law can now celebrate its adulthood and deserves a bird’s eye exploration of its achievements, failures, and prospects. The present article provides this exploration by zooming in on these twin Directives, as well as on the “new” grounds of discrimination planted therein, namely race and ethnicity—the grounds introduced by the Race Equality Directive—religion, sexual orientation, age, and disability—the grounds introduced by Framework Equality Directive—and the related jurisprudence of European courts. It first outlines the genesis and main stages in the development of EU anti-discrimination law, followed by a discussion of major normative and practical themes emerging in EU anti-discrimination law after 2000, such as the personal and material scope of the Directives, new forms of discrimination, mechanisms to counteract discrimination, and the proceduralization of EU anti-discrimination law.
EU equality law after a decade of austerity
International Journal of Discrimination and the Law
This article discusses the evolution of EU legislation and policymaking methods during the ten years since the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2007/2008. In the EU, this period has been characterized by politics of stimulus, austerity and recovery. Against the backdrop of longerterm developments in the equality law field, we consider how this crisis context influenced this field's evolution. Through analysis of a range of legislative and policy proposals, we show that the progressive softening or hybridization of equality law over this period has gone hand in hand with the stronger articulation of equality objectives in terms of a 'business case'. While this approach appears to have enabled proliferation of policy and legal instruments and expanded the reach of equality law into areas where the EU has limited competence to legislate, it has also elevated instrumental economic goals for action at expense of human rights or social rationales. This longer-term tendency is also present in the recently adopted European Pillar of Social Rights, and the accompanying policy documentation, which have been hailed as carrying potential to infuse more coherence and to rebalance the social and economic rationales that the EU integration project has unevenly promoted over the years. Mindful that it is still too early for conclusive judgments, we suggest, however, that the transformative possibilities the Pillar carries are likely to be undermined by its soft and economically oriented thrust.
Uladzislau Belavusau and Kristin Henrard (eds.), EU Anti-Discrimination Law beyond Gender, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2018 (forthcoming).
As long as the Union endorses the discriminatory practices of its Member States taking the claims of ‘culture’ at face value, even when this implies disregarding the spirit of EU Equality Directives and the basics of the internal market, or alternatively finds the regimes of minority protection in place in the Member States to conflict with the internal market rules, a concerted revision of the EU’s approach to minorities is likely to remain a task for the future. It is problematic that the Union is overwhelmingly inconsistent in either quashing national minority protection (i.e. its policies pertaining to EU citizenship and anti-discrimination law), or weighing in with the Member States wishing to punish their minorities for being different under the pretext, precisely, that only majority culture is protected by the national constitutions. Imperatively, it would appear that the EU does not consider minority protection as a true value thus depriving the matter not only of coherence, but also of any systemic importance. This will have to change both in the interests of minority protection as a proclaimed value of the Union and also the internal market as such: belonging to an ethnic minority should not disqualify economically active EU citizens enjoying free movement rights from the basic guarantees of non-discrimination on the basis of nationality upon return to the Member State of origin, notwithstanding the Court’s regrettable stance in Runevič.
European Journal of Law and Public Administration, 2017
The European Commission has been addressing collective redress issues for almost 20 years, initially in particular in the context of consumer protection and competition policy 2. On the basis of a broader horizontal approach, the Commission adopted a Recommendation on 11 June 2013 on common principles for injunctive and compensatory collective redress mechanisms in the Member States concerning violations of rights granted under Union law ('the Recommendation') [pp. 60-65]. The Recommendation established principles which should be applicable in relation to violations of rights granted under Union law across all policy fields and in relation to both injunctive and compensatory relief. It follows from the Recommendation that all Member States should have collective redress systems at national level that follow the same basic principles throughout the Union, taking into account the legal traditions of the Member States and safeguarding against potential abuse.