GEO International - EU Directive
UK Consultation on the European Commission Proposal for an
Equal Treatment Directive
The Government ran a 12 week public
consultation from May to July in 2009 on the European Commission
Proposal for an Equal Treatment Directive. The Government Summary
of Responses to this consultation can be found
here:
Related documents, including the Impact Assessment ,
Equality Impact Assessment and original consultation document can
be found here:
EU Directive
On 2 July 2008 the European Commission
published a draft anti-discrimination Directive. This
Directive proposes extending protection from discrimination in the
provision of goods, facilities and services to cover disability,
age, sexual orientation and religion or belief.
There are already EU Directives prohibiting
discrimination and harassment on all the equality grounds in
employment and vocational training; and on grounds of race and
gender in the provision of goods, facilities and services.
The text of the draft Directive can be
found on the
EU website. Also on the EU website are more
documents that provide further details, for example the impact
assessment prepared by the Commission, the findings of some
research undertaken and details of a consultation exercise that the
Commission undertook.
The UK Government welcomes the opportunity to
consider the Commission's proposal for a new Directive and will
work constructively with our European and domestic partners to
ensure that any Directive adopted is effective in tackling
discrimination.
In the UK we have already legislated
domestically to prohibit discrimination in the provision of goods,
facilities and services on grounds of sexual orientation, religion
or belief and disability (as well as race and gender). And we
have recently announced that we will be introducing legislation
banning discrimination on the grounds of age in these fields in the
Equality Bill.