Germany: Anti-discrimination law watered down?
01 March 2005
On 28 April this year, Germany was reprimanded by the European Commission, which brought a case before the European Court of Justice, for failing to implement the EU guidelines against discrimination on grounds of race, ethnicity or gender. The law should have been passed at national level by 19 July 2003, and although the government has produced a draft (see Statewatch vol 14 no 6) it still has not been passed by the Bundestag (Upper House - the approval of the Lower House is not necessary). There is disagreement amongst members of the government coalition about the level of protection and in particular insurance companies, employers and landlords want to change the current version. The German draft law goes further than the EU guidelines in including discrimination on grounds of age, sexual identity, religion, world view or disability next to the grounds outlined at EU level.
In contrast to the EU guidelines, the draft text also includes a delegated liability clause for the employer, which, according to Dieter Hundt, head of the German Employers' Association, could possibly lead to a scenario where an employer is held liable for the discrimination against his or her employee if they were discriminated against by customers. The arguments were debated in a day long parliamentary hearing which invited 20 experts and 40 representatives of relevant associations, but agreement has not been reached.
Industry and employers representatives have a particular influence in the debate and they find support from Interior Minister, Otto Schily, Economic Affairs Minister, Wolfgang Clement, and government leader of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Peer Steinbrück (all from the
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), who think the law is too "far-reaching" and "bureaucratic". Steinbrück claimed the law represented an "additional strain on the economy", while Angela Merkel, head of the conservative
Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) thinks the law would be a "job killer". For Dieter Hundt, even the obligation for employers to keep application letters for at least 9 months in case of possible challenges was enough to call the anti-discrimination provision, the first one in Germany, a "bureaucratic monster".
Süddeutsche Zeitung 7.3.05