Equality Law in Practice 2012
Equality Law in Practice 2012
Authors: Jayne HARDWICK, Peter READING, Florian PANTHENE, Catharina GERMAINE SAHL
This publication was prepared by Equinet’s Working Group on Equality Law in Practice. The group consists of legal experts working at National Equality Bodies and focuses on how European and national equality legislation is implemented and interpreted.
This work is intended to further the goal of achieving enhanced and harmonized protection from discrimination across all the EU Member States and beyond.
One aspect of the Group’s work is using real-life cases to analyse how the EU Equal Treatment Directives and relevant national legislation are applied in practice. This method permits a comparison of the different national legal solutions to the cases which in turn achieves a number of objectives:
- identifying patterns in the way in which Directives have been implemented and applied in national laws;
- identifying potential gaps in protection or provisions in the EU Directives requiring further clarification;
- identifying potential and existing legislative gaps in national legal systems.
The first case analysed in this report concerns a claim of associative sex discrimination on grounds of the pregnancy of the claimant’s partner and it offered an opportunity for the working group to compile valuable information on the relevant national laws to an Equinet Member representing the claimant in the case currently awaiting a preliminary ruling at the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The second case concerns a claim of discriminatory dismissal of older workers and can be also seen as the working group’s contribution to the 2012 European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations.
The third and fourth cases concern discrimination on the ground of nationality or citizenship, providing an analysis of the limits of legal protection awarded to third-country nationals by the EU as well as national legislation. This analysis is also expected to bear relevance in the context of the report on the application of the Race Equality Directive currently being prepared by the European Commission.
The summary of the findings for each case contains a number of conclusions and lessons learned which Equinet hopes will be of practical value for National Equality Bodies, national governments, the European institutions and other stakeholders in their work on European anti-discrimination law.
