EU equality law: from protecting ‘groups’ to protection of all

Milner, J

Abstract

The extended number of grounds for discrimination identified for protection by Article 13 of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, reflects the emergence and policy recognition of new constituencies based on identity politics, such as the gay rights, disability and older people’ s movements. This trend when combined with the social (re)construction of their boundaries as intersecting and relational, has resulted in an EU led policy shift in favour of protection for ‘all’, whilst at the same time retaining an awareness of group-defined identity. Growing knowledge of the complex legal consequences of an increasing number of prohibited grounds, which are also intersectional, has led to an international debate as to where the cut off line should lie between protection for enumerated groups and recognition of individual differences and diversity. This has raised the question as to just how extensive and exhaustive such lists of grounds should be. This paper will examine both Canadian human rights legislation and EU anti-discrimination legislation, and its significant expansion of protected grounds, with a view to evaluating first, how effectively equality guarantees, such as the new UK Single Equality Bill, can accommodate multi-discrimination claims and/or claims from those individuals/groups currently unprotected by the EU, and second, future directions beyond the formal equality approach.

• Publication Date: Feb 16, 2012
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2020
• Publisher: Routledge
• Series Title: Routledge Research in Human Rights Law
• Book Title: The EU as a global player in human rights?
• ISBN: 9780415587051
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203126301
• Publisher URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415587051/
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/