With the Employment Equality Directive (Directive 2000/78/EC), the European Union has set up a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, empowering it to combat discrimination based on religion or belief, age, disability and sexual orientation.

The Employment Equality Directive seeks to eliminate, on grounds relating to social and public interest, all discriminatory obstacles to access to livelihoods and to the capacity to contribute to society through work, irrespective of the legal form in which it is provided.

To this end, the directive prohibits direct and indirect discrimination (including harassment and instructions to discriminate) based on religion or belief, age, disability and sexual orientation in the field of employment and occupation.

This Directive is complemented by the ‘Racial Equality Directive’ (2000/43/EC), in which the EU has set up a framework for equal treatment irrespective of racial or ethnic origin in employment and occupation, among other areas.

Minimum requirements

In particular, the Employment Equality Directive lays down minimum requirements prohibiting discrimination in:

• conditions for access to employment, to self-employment or to occupation, including selection criteria and recruitment conditions, whatever the branch of activity and at all levels of the professional hierarchy, including promotion;
• access to all types and to all levels of vocational guidance, vocational training, advanced vocational training and retraining, including practical work experience;
• employment and working conditions, including pay and dismissals;
• membership of, and involvement in, an organisation of workers or employers or any organisation whose members carry on a particular profession including the benefits provided for by such organisations.

Obligation for reasonable accommodations

Moreover, to guarantee compliance with the principle of equal treatment in relation to persons with disabilities, the Employment Equality Directive sets that reasonable accommodation shall be provided.

This means that employers shall take appropriate measures, where needed in a particular case, to enable a person with a disability to have access to, participate in, or advance in employment, or to undergo training, unless such measures would impose a disproportionate burden on the employer.

This burden shall not be disproportionate when it is sufficiently remedied by measures existing within the framework of the disability policy of the Member State concerned.

The Employment Equality Directive applies to all persons, as regards both the public and private sectors, including public bodies, as well as for all types of employment or occupation.

Positive action measures

With a view to ensuring full equality in practice, the principle of equal treatment does not prevent specific positive action measures to prevent or compensate for disadvantages linked to religion or belief, age, disability and sexual orientation.

Remedies and application of the law

The Employment Equality Directive includes a series of mechanisms to ensure effective remedies in the event of discrimination:

• Improvement of legal protection: Member States shall ensure that judicial and/or administrative procedures, for the enforcement of obligations under this Directive are available to all persons who consider themselves wronged by failure to apply the principle of equal treatment to them, even after the relationship in which the discrimination is alleged to have occurred has ended;
• Shifting the burden of proof: when persons who consider themselves victim of discrimination establish, before a court or other competent authority, facts from which it may be presumed that there has been discrimination, it shall be for the respondent to prove that such discrimination did not occur;
• Protection of victims of discrimination against reprisals: Member States shall introduce measures to protect employees against dismissal or other adverse treatment by the employer as a reaction to a complaint within the undertaking or to any legal proceedings aimed at enforcing compliance with the principle of equal treatment;
• Dissemination of adequate information on the Directive’s provisions: Member States shall take care that the provisions adopted pursuant to this Directive, together with the relevant provisions already in force in this field, are brought to the attention of the persons concerned by all appropriate means, for example at the workplace, throughout their territory.

As the social partners have a crucial role to play in combating discrimination, Member States must take adequate measures to promote social dialogue between the social partners with a view to fostering equal treatment.

This includes monitoring of workplace practices, collective agreements, codes of conduct, as well as research or exchange of experiences and good practices.

Other grounds of discrimination

The Employment Equality Directive is part of a series of measures aiming to prevent and combat discrimination in Europe, while building a Union of Equality.

In addition to the Employment Equality Directive, the EU produced also other legislation to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of gender as well as racial and ethnic origin.