24-07-2025
Commission revives anti-discrimination directive after 17-year standstill
A directive to enshrine anti-discrimination rules into EU and national law is being resurrected after 17 years of political limbo and threats of withdrawal.
The Equal Treatment Directive would instruct EU countries to implement national laws addressing anti-discrimination and ensure equal access to social rights, education, goods and services, and protection on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.
The bill, which was originally presented in 2008, has been stuck in the Council for nearly two decades, and the European Commission signalled earlier this year that it intended to scrap it altogether.
Now, as first reported by Euractiv, the Commission has reversed its decision, saying it "has decided to maintain for further political discussion the proposal for the Equal Treatment Directive," a Commission spokesperson said on Wednesday. Back and forth In its 2025 work programme released early this year, the Commission listed the proposal amongst legislation the executive was looking to scrap, citing that "the proposal is blocked and further progress is unlikely."
In May, however, Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib told dismayed lawmakers in the Parliament's civil liberties committee that the Commission would take feedback from MEPs into account.
While the Parliament's political leaders endorsed the Commission's plans to withdraw, the committee chairs in June urged the executive to keep it alive. A month later, 14 EU countries signed a letter, asking the Commission to drop its plans to withdraw the proposal.
Eventually, the Commission budged and is now keeping the directive on the agenda, "having considered the supportive position expressed by the Parliament and by a large majority of member states in the Council," a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv.
"We will therefore redouble our efforts in supporting the [Danish] presidency and the member states with all possible means to help find an agreement on this important proposal." Movement in December The Danish presidency is expected to bring the issue to the agenda when EU employment and social ministers meet in early December.
"We will do our best to bring progress and continue bilateral consultations with the countries still opposed," Danish Minister of Social Affairs, Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, told MEPs in the Parliament's employment committee last week.
A February briefing from the Parliament's research service suggests that many EU countries have improved their legislation in the 17 years that have passed since the original proposal. Germany, Czechia, and Italy are understood to be the three main holdouts in the Council.
Parliamentarians have been celebrating the U-turn, taking credit for it. "Thanks to progressive political forces refusing to accept the Commission's idea of withdrawing the legislation, we managed, after much persistent lobbying, to get the Commission to change its mind," Green Swedish lawmaker Alice Bah Kuhnke told Euractiv.
"It is a result of months of hard work from myself and fellow negotiators," centre-right MEP Maria Walsh wrote on her website.
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