EU Law

The 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam expanded significantly the legal competence of the European Union for combatting discrimination. Traditionally, EU law has concentrated on discrimination between women and men and discrimination on the grounds of EU nationality. However, Article 13 EC created a new legal space for the Union to regulate discrimination on the ground of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, or sexual orientation. This book aims to improve our understanding of the evolution of European Union law in the field. To this end, it considers the development of EU law and policy in respect of two specific grounds of discrimination — race and sexual orientation. It provides an account of the debate within the institutions and Member States, analysis of relevant case law from the Court of Justice, and coverage of the anti-discrimination directives adopted in 2001. The book further considers the relationship between national and European anti-discrimination law. A survey of national anti-discrimination statutes is presented in order to identify the variety of legal traditions that exist in this field. The diversity of these legal cultures impacts significantly upon the scope for and nature of EU anti-discrimination legislation. The author concludes by reviewing the principle factors that have influenced the evolution of EU anti-discrimination law and applying this to an analysis of the prospects for future development.

EU Anti-Discrimination Law provides a detailed and critical analysis of the corpus of EU law prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, and sexual orientation. It takes into account the changes brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon and it contains thorough examination of the relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the EU. The book examines the background to the legislation and explains the essential characteristics and doctrines of EU law, in so far as they are relevant to the topic of anti-discrimination. It also analyses the increasingly significant general principles of EU law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the relevant law flowing from the European Convention on Human Rights. The key concepts contained in anti-discrimination law are subjected to close scrutiny. The substantive provisions of the law on equal pay and the workplace and non-workplace provisions of the governing directives are similarly examined, as are the numerous exceptions permitted to them. The complex rules governing the rights of pregnant women and those who have recently given birth are dealt with comprehensively in a separate chapter. Equality in social security schemes is also discussed. The book concludes with an assessment of the practical utility of the existing law and the current proposals for its reform.

Sanctions against private individuals have been widely used in the fight against terrorism, but not without significant controversy. This book examines the complex institutional and substantive issues arising from the European Union's practice of listing and sanctioning private individuals suspected of supporting terrorism. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the issues raised by individual sanctions adopted to give legal effect to United Nations lists and those drawn up by the EU itself. The book demonstrates that individual sanctions endanger the protection of fundamental rights and the functioning of the European legal order. While the ECJ has in principle confirmed that all Community sanctions are subject to full judicial review irrespective of whether they give effect to UN lists or EU lists, in practice individuals do not have the necessary procedural rights at their disposal. Additionally, protection from listings of individuals as terrorist suspects in the second and third pillar remains very limited. This raises the possibility that national constitutional courts could challenge the supremacy of European law in reaction to this disregard of fundamental rights and foundational principles. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of these complex legal issues, and situates them in their international context. The basis of the book is a critical review of the case-law of the CFI and the ECJ on individual sanctions. Conclusions are drawn as to how the EU Courts should provide fundamental rights protection, and suggestions are made for how the adoption procedure of individual sanctions could comply with general principles of EU law.

The European Convention on Human Rights underwent a spectacular evolution over the first fifty years of its life. In recent times the European Court of Human Rights has been compared to a quasi-constitutional court for Europe in the field of human rights, and for some time the Convention has been viewed as a European Bill of Rights. The ‘coming of age’ of the ECHR system in the late 1990s was marked by the entry into force of Protocol 11, creating a new, full time Court. By contrast those who first proposed a European human rights guarantee were driven by an ambition to put in place a collective pact to prevent the re-emergence of totalitarianism in ‘free’ Europe. They were motivated by grisly memories of human rights abuse associated with World War Two, and the protection of ‘human rights’ was seen in that light. When the Convention was opened for signature in 1950 it was viewed by many with scepticism and disappointment. The Convention system took many years to get established. In the mid-1960s doubts were expressed as to whether the Court had a future, and in the 1970s the Convention system of control faced a number of serious challenges. This book examines the story of the evolution of the Convention over its first fifty years (1948–98). It reflects on the Convention's origins and charts the slow progress that it made over the 1950s and 1960s, before, in the late 1970s, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a series of landmark judgments which proved to be the foundation stones for the European Bill of Rights that we know today.

The friendly settlement procedure is an important tool for the reduction of the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) case load. Recent practice demonstrates that this procedure is increasingly resorted to by applicants and Contracting States. This book evaluates this largely unexplored instrument from doctrinal as well as practical perspectives, making recommendations to render the negotiations before the ECtHR more efficient and professional. The book examines questions relating to the admissibility as well as to the practical manageability of friendly settlements. In contrast to ordinary civil proceedings, the friendly settlements procedure has a mixed legal character: while settlements are an inter-partes procedure, they are also binding under international law, as the ECtHR often hands them down in the form of a judgment. In this context, the question arises as to how far the proceedings can be ‘privatised’ and where the limits to the monetisation of human rights violation lie. This book evaluates possible abuses and identifies the precautions that need to be taken in the framework of friendly settlements. This issue is linked to the question of whether the legal framework which governs the conclusion of a friendly settlement should be formulated in a more concrete manner, given that the position of the parties is unequal and that the role of the Court is hardly defined in this context. Furthermore, the book empirically examines whether the friendly settlement procedure is as advantageous in comparison to ordinary proceedings as others have argued. It also questions whether the friendly settlements procedure can provide the applicant with ‘more money faster’.

This book provides a detailed account of the negotiation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the major achievement of the Council of Europe, and of its impact on the British Empire in its closing years. The book concentrates on the role of the United Kingdom in the negotiations, and the consequences which followed ratification. To provide the historical context for these negotiations it gives a detailed history of the protection of individual rights in the common law system, and of the rise of the movement for the international protection of human rights. This was largely a product of the Second World War, though having antecedents back in the 16th century and earlier.

During the past two decades, the European Union has become increasingly involved in combating racism. Most notably, EU legislation requires Member States to introduce laws prohibiting racial discrimination in many aspects of everyday life, such as employment, education, healthcare, and housing. Alongside legislation requiring action at national level, the EU institutions have also made periodic commitments to take anti-racism objectives into account within all areas of EU law and policy. The latter approach is often referred to as ‘mainstreaming’ and the technique is borrowed from earlier initiatives to promote the mainstreaming of gender equality. This book analyses the extent to which the objectives of combating racism and promoting ethnic equality have been effectively mainstreamed throughout a range of EU policy fields. It begins by considering what combating racism means in the contemporary context of an enlarged EU. Specifically, the book scrutinises what is entailed in mainstreaming ethnic equality objectives. The second part of the book turns to examining several areas of EU law and policy in order to identify the extent to which such objectives have been, in practice, integrated into these activities. Here, the book looks at topics such as employment, social inclusion (including education and health), immigration, and criminal law.