Suchergebnisse

"This book contains an in-depth examination of the Islamic headscarf cases of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and places these against the background of the Islamophobia existing across Europe. It assesses how EU law can best protect women who want to wear headscarves at work for religious reasons and why this protection is important not only for the women themselves but also for the EU, taking into account its values as laid down in the Treaties, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and in the anti-discrimination Directives. It puts forward arguments for a finding that workplace neutrality bans constitute direct religion or belief discrimination and examines the way that the justification test for indirect discrimination has been applied by the CJEU. The work suggests that such bans could be more successfully challenged as gender and/or racial or ethnic origin discrimination, because the protection against these forms of discrimination is stronger. It also suggests that a claim for intersectional discrimination - on the grounds of gender, racial and ethnic origin, and religion or belief - should be possible in EU anti-discrimination law. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of equality and non-discrimination law, EU law and law and religion"--

"Written in accessible language, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of a topical subject that is being widely debated across Europe. The work presents an overview of emerging case law from the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union as well as from national courts and equality bodies in European countries on the wearing of religious symbols in public spaces. The author persuasively argues that bans on the wearing of religious symbols constitutes a breach of an individual's human rights and contravenes existing anti-discrimination legislation. Fully updated to take account of recent case law, this 2nd edition has been expanded to consider bans in public spaces more generally, including employment, an area where some of the recent developments have taken place."--

Freedom of expression and freedom of religion under the European Convention on Human Rights -- Conflict of rights? -- Religious hate speech and religious hate speech laws -- Restrictions on freedom of expression to spare religious feelings -- Alternative approaches to (religious) hate speech -- Case in point : the prosecutions of Geert Wilders

In 2000, the European Union adopted a Directive against discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin. This book provides an in-depth evaluation of the Race Directive and its effects, questioning how successful the Race directive has been. The EU Race Directive discusses the history of the fight against racial discrimination in the EU and the equality clauses in international Human Rights instruments. It then examines the terms race, racism and racial discrimination and equality in the Directive. The book also looks at the concepts of equality which can be disting

The CJEU judgment in the two latest Islamic headscarf cases was handed down in July 2021. The judgment allows employers to ban the wearing of religious and other symbols by employees, but it does specify under what conditions this can be done. This article builds on a previous article on the opinion of AG Rantos and the Shadow Opinion of former AG Sharpston and analyses the judgment in detail. It argues that the judgment is an improvement on the previous CJEU headscarf judgments in that it provides more protection for fundamental human rights. However, the CJEU also appears to allow employers to a certain extent to pander to the prejudicial wishes of their customers. The article concludes that the judgment presents a small glimmer of hope that the CJEU might be moving – albeit very slowly - towards more protection of Muslim women who want to wear headscarves at work for religious reasons.

This article examines the Opinion of AG Rantos in two cases concerning Islamic headscarves before the CJEU and argues that this Opinion appears to give almost carte blanche to (private) employers to adopt neutrality policies in their workplaces based on the wishes of their customers. In doing so, the AG appears to allow employers to pander to the prejudices of their customers and to push believers, and especially Muslim women, even further out of sight. It is argued that this affects not only the employment opportunities, but also the social inclusion of people from groups especially vulnerable to discrimination and that this goes against the founding values of the EU. The CJEU now has a choice: it can choose to protect the fundamental rights of religious minorities by taking these rights into account when assessing the two cases before it, or it can allow employers to pander to the prejudice of customers against people from religious minorities.

This article examines the Opinion of AG Rantos in two cases concerning Islamic headscarves before the CJEU and argues that this Opinion appears to give almost carte blanche to (private) employers to adopt neutrality policies in their workplaces based on the wishes of their customers. In doing so, the AG appears to allow employers to pander to the prejudices of their customers and to push believers, and especially Muslim women, even further out of sight. It is argued that this affects not only the employment opportunities, but also the social inclusion of people from groups especially vulnerable to discrimination and that this goes against the founding values of the EU. The CJEU now has a choice: it can choose to protect the fundamental rights of religious minorities by taking these rights into account when assessing the two cases before it, or it can allow employers to pander to the prejudice of customers against people from religious minorities.

In 2017, the CJEU brought out its judgments in two cases concerning bans on the wearing of Islamic headscarves at work as possible discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief under Directive 2000/78/EC. These judgments led to heavy criticism, mainly because the CJEU did not do a rigorous proportionality test and left a number of questions open. Two recent preliminary references from courts in Germany present the CJEU with an opportunity to expand on the earlier judgments and to answer the questions they left open. It is submitted that the CJEU should deal with this unfinished business in a way which respects Europe's religious diversity and ensures that the ground of religion and belief does not become the poor relation of EU anti-discrimination law.

This article contains an analysis of the recent CJEU cases on the wearing of Islamic headscarves at work. It is argued that the CJEU had four main options in answering the questions referred by the national courts in these cases: it could have found that the employer's rules in these cases constituted direct discrimination; it could have held that there was no direct discrimination but that there might be indirect discrimination, but that a very strict justification test should be applied; it could have concluded that there might be indirect discrimination and that a very lenient justification test should be applied; or, it could have found that the wish of customers not to have services provided by an employee wearing a headscarf is a genuine and determining occupational requirement. The CJEU appears to have chosen the third option, and in doing so, has missed the opportunity to take a strong lead in providing protection against religion or belief discrimination and against discrimination of minorities.