DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE

Combating Discrimination in the Workplace

Abstract

There is comparatively less literature on the mechanisms for enforcement of the Directives and the remedies for discrimination. Many authors welcome various innovations within the Directives, such as the duty to create an equal treatment body within the Racial Equality Directive or the rules on legal standing for organisations in both Directives. Nonetheless, various authors would have preferred the Directives to go further here. In particular, several authors suggest that organisations should have autonomous legal standing to bring complaints of discrimination and they should not be restricted to supporting individual victims. There is some debate within the literature on equal treatment bodies and the range of models available within Europe. The most common observation here is that the duty on Member States to create an equal treatment body should have been also included within the Framework Employment Directive.

Combating Discrimination in the Workplace

Introduction

The inclusion of Article 13 in the Treaty of Amsterdam extended the powers of the European Union in the field of combating discrimination and gave rise to two new Directives setting out to implement the principles of equal treatment across Europe: Directive 2000/43/EC implementing the principle of equal treatment irrespective of racial or ethnic origin and Directive 2000/78/EC establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation (Bell, 2003, 349). The innovative approach of the Directives has attracted considerable attention from both policymakers and the academic world, and there is a growing body of academic literature referring to the Directives, both in respect of their contents and the process of implementation. The objective of this report is to present an analytical overview of what has been written about the Directives in academic circles, mainly within 15 Member States of the European Union (Bryan, 2002, 223). Organised around the main themes found in the literature, the report presents key tendencies in academic thinking about the Directives, and highlights the main conclusions and messages put forward by the studies included in the analysis.

Thematic analysis

The literature falls into several broad categories. First, there are publications examining EU anti-discrimination law from a general perspective in the light of the Directives. These present and evaluate the contents of the Directives, but also consider the Directives in the wider context of EU social law and policy. This group of literature includes theoretical reflections on the concept of equality found within the Directives and how this interacts with other areas of law and policy, such as human rights and citizenship (Hvinden, 2004, 296). A second group of literature provides a more technical review of specific provisions of the Directives, for example, the meaning and significance of the definition of harassment. A third group of literature examines the Directives in relation to a specific national context and normally with an eye to the national process of implementation

General evaluations of EU anti-discrimination law after the Directives

A significant body of literature concerns a general evaluation of EU anti-discrimination law in the wake of the ...