Sexual Orientation Discrimination in the European Union

The Employment Equality Directive requires EU Member States to prohibit sexual orientation discrimination in the field of employment. This book is the first to assess to what degree the Directive’s requirements have been met by the twenty-five Member States and by Bulgaria and Romania.


The authors discuss the relevant aspects of EU law and provide a detailed analysis of the quality and conformity of national anti-discrimination legislation aimed at implementing the Employment Equality Directive. In this analysis special attention is paid to the implications of what distinguishes sexual orientation from other forbidden grounds of discrimination. Therefore the book focuses on the various private and public aspects of sexual orientation, such as preference, behaviour, partnership and ‘coming out’. It discusses direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, permissible and impermissible exceptions, sanctions, and the role of interest groups and specialised enforcement bodies. This is done against the background of international human rights law and in relation to the general legal situation with respect to lesbian and gay rights in the twenty-seven countries.


The unique perspective taken by the authors and the in-depth and systematic coverage of a wide range of jurisdictions make this book useful not only to judges, legal practitioners, policy makers, academics and students in the EU, but also to readers further afield, interested in European, anti-discrimination, sexual orientation and/or employment law.


Kees Waaldijk is a senior lecturer at the E.M. Meijers Institute of Legal Studies of the University of Leiden, specialising in law & homosexuality issues. Matteo Bonini-Baraldi is a researcher, working at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bologna. Together they headed the European Group of Experts on Combating Sexual Orientation Discrimination set up by the European Commission.

• Discrimination
• Employment Equality Directive
• Employment law
• Human Rights law
• Social Legal Studies
• anti-discrimination legislation
• direct discrimination
• indirect discrimination
• sexual orientation discrimination

• Leiden University Kamerlingh Onnes Building, Meijers Institute Faculty of Law, Leiden, The Netherlands

  Kees Waaldijk

• niversità degli Studi, Bologna, Italy

  Matteo Bonini-Baraldi

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