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 init ... More

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.