Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-047"
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"en.20080520.6.2-047"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the other groups for their cooperation, particularly some of the shadows. I believe that working together we have achieved a good report.
I have looked in this report at the transposition and implementation of the current directives, in other words the Employment Directive and the Race Directive. I have concentrated more on the Employment Directive, because race was covered by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in a very good report last year. Transposition and implementation is patchy across the EU, especially with the Employment Directive, although there are problems with the Race Directive as well. There is also a lack of information given to citizens about possible remedies in case of discrimination.
The Commission, Member States, trade unions, as well as governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, must do all in their power to improve awareness of rights under these directives and Member States must adequately resource independent bodies to promote equality and encourage Member States to ensure the remit of those bodies covers all forms of discrimination.
Too often the individual victims of discrimination are the ones who are left to challenge discrimination on their own, without the back-up of advocacy support or indeed the legal wherewithal to take legal proceedings, and that has to change. Member States should ensure that victims of discrimination are automatically assured and assisted in legal proceedings. Although I welcome the statistics that the Commission has already gathered on discrimination, I believe we need more data and a common standard for collecting that data.
I welcome the Commission’s interest in multiple discrimination and that is one of the reasons why I call in my report for comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation. We must get away from the piecemeal approach. There can be no hierarchy of discrimination. A new directive must cover discrimination and access to goods and services on all grounds that have not been covered as yet under Article 13 legislation. It should cover disability, age, religion or belief and sexual orientation. Race and gender are already covered, as is employment.
I regret that although Commissioner Špidla has committed himself to this and the Commission made the commitment to a horizontal directive in its work programme for 2008 – and I commend Commissioner Špidla particularly for this – there appears to be some backtracking on this within the Commission. Can the Commission tell us at what stage are the impact assessments, what they cover, and when they will be released? As I understand it, they are now saying that they might only bring forward legislation on disability and nothing else. That is not acceptable, hence our amendment.
I have campaigned for years for Article 13 legislation on grounds of disability and on grounds of age, but I am now convinced that we must not leave anyone behind. Anti-discrimination and human rights are the basis of the European Union and every EU citizen must be treated equally.
I urge you to vote for my report and more importantly for a comprehensive directive on anti-discrimination so we can give a signal to those in the Commission who do not agree with this, and the Member States, that we are committed as a Parliament at least to ending discrimination once and for all, and end the ridiculous idea that it is alright to discriminate against any one section of our society."@en1
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