The European network of legal experts 1 has just published a new thematic report in the non-discrimination field, entitled National protection beyond the two EU anti-discrimination Directives: The grounds of religion and belief, disability, age and sexual orientation beyond employment.
The report provides an extensive mapping of existing national regulation of discrimination outside the field of employment on the grounds of religion and belief, disability, age and sexual orientation, and covers the 28 EU Member States as well as the accession candidate countries (FYR of Macedonia, Iceland and Turkey) and the EEA countries (Liechtenstein and Norway).
The study notes that there is extensive regulation of discrimination on the relevant grounds beyond the context of employment both across the EU and in the other ountries surveyed.
That regulation frequently, though not invariably, consists in anti-discrimination legislation covering the relevant grounds (and sometimes others) across a wide material scope. In other cases regulation is achieved by some combination of detailed legislation and/or Constitutional provisions and/or field specific legislation. Of the relevant grounds disability is probably the most comprehensively covered at this time, with the prohibitions on such discrimination regularly including a duty of accommodation extending beyond the employment sphere. The least regulated ground is probably age but there is not a huge disparity between this and the grounds of religion/ belief and sexual orientation.
Read the report.
1 The European Network of Legal Experts in the Non-Discrimination Field was created by the European Commission in December 2007 with the purpose of establishing a network of legal experts in the field of discrimination on the grounds of racial and ethnic origin, religion or belief, age, disability and sexual orientation and to support the Commission’s work by providing independent information and advice on relevant developments in the EU Member States and more recently the additional countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway and Turkey.
