collega - Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem

Article 15 of the Racial Equality
Directive and Article 17 of the
Employment Equality Directive
require Member States to provide
sanctions for infringements of national
provisions which are adopted to
implement the Directives and to take
all measures necessary to ensure that
they are applied. The sanctions must
be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
They may include compensation.
A wide range of remedies
exist at national level depending on
whether discrimination is criminal
(fines) or civil (re-instatement in
your job or damages in the form of
compensation for loss of earnings or
damages for injury to feelings or
moral damages.
Next to the similarities, some
diffrences can also be mentioned,
mainly in connection with the discrimination
areas of the directives.
The Employment Equality Directive
2000/78/EC requires employers to
make reasonable accommodation to
enable a person with a disability
who is qualified to do the job in
question to participate in training or
paid labour. Besides, it allows for
limited exceptions to the principle of
equal treatment, for example, where
the ethos of a religious organisation
needs to be preserved, or where an
employer legitimately requires an
employee to be from a certain age
group to be recruited. The Racial
Equality Directive 2000/43/EC provides
for the establishment in each
Member State of an organisation to
promote equal treatment and provide
independent assistance to victims
of racial discrimination.
III. Equal treatment and antidiscrimination
in practice
The Community has developed a
three part strategy to combat discrimination:
next to the two
Directives analysed above there are
the so-called ’Community Action
Programme to combat discrimination
2001–2006’. Between 2001–2006,
the Community Action Programme
has played a key role both in raising
awareness of the issues surrounding
discrimination and in developing
the ability of stakeholders to tackle
discrimination according to the
external evaluators of the Action
Programme. 2007 has been declared
the European Year of Equal
Opportunities for All, to give a fresh
impetus to fighting discrimination
and promoting diversity, tackling
discrimination on the grounds of
sex, ethnic or racial origin, age, sexual
orientation, disability, religion or
belief. At the same time it will continue
and build on the work of the
Community Action Programme to
combat discrimination, with a new
emphasis on reaching out to a broad
public and making people aware of
their rights to equal treatment. New
tools and new approaches will help
Europe to continue to move forward
with its efforts in the field of equality
and non-discrimination. The EU’s
PROGRESS programme – to fund
activities in employment and social
affairs from 2007–2013 – is expected
to take up some of the best ideas
generated during the European Year,
ensuring they make a real impact in
the long term as well.
IV. Conclusion
In my view, European Union has a
very complete set of legislation in the
field of equal treatment. The
European Union’s anti-discrimination
legislation is one of the most
ambitious and far-reaching in the
world. Besides, in 2000 a real
progress has been made in the field
of equal treatment law. As I see, the
principle rules laid down in the two
Directives show an anti-discrimination
law which would like to have a
much more intensive and much
greater influence than ever in the
Member States. The EU has made a
great step forward with implementing
this Directives, but according to
the practice and lessons learned
from the programmes, there are even
new ways and possibilities in this
field, that is why it has to be
improved in the forthcoming years.
Bibliography
Official Journal of the European
Communities
http://equality2007.europa.eu
www.eu.int/comm/antidiscrimination
Howard, Erica: Anti-Race Discrimination
Measures in Europe: An
Attack on Two Fronts, in: European
Law Journal, 2005, p. 468–486
Sloat, Amanda: Legislating for
Equality:The Implementation of the
EU Equality Acquis in Central and
Eastern Europe, Jean Monnet
Working Paper 08/2004, New York
Horvath, Zoltan: Handbook on
the European Union, Budapest, 2002
294 XI. évfolyam 2–3. szám