Gender Equal Access to Goods and Services Directive 2004/113/EC. European Implementation Assessment

Please note: Each EPRS Study is assigned a DOI (digital object identifier), which is a safe and long term way of ensuring a hyperlink to the full text of this report. However, when ESO creates this record, on occasion the DOI still has not been activated by the EU Bookshop. If you find the source url hyperlink does not work please use the alternative location hyperlink listed as a related url.Directive 2004/113/EC is part of EU anti-discrimination law and sets a frame of minimum rules for ensuring gender equality in the access to and supply of goods and services. The present assessment critically describes the genesis and implementation of this Directive across EU Member States, in particular after the European Court of Justice ‘Test-Achats’ case of March 2011, which enforced gender equality in the insurance sector.

The notion of ‘indirect discrimination’ requires increased awareness of multiple factual and legal cause-effect relationships. This appears to be of particular importance in the health sector, where insufficient consideration of female conditions could result in severe adverse consequences. Indirect discrimination in access to goods and services cannot be curbed by applying this Directive alone, but by pursuing equality in all policy areas and notably by consequent application of all other anti-discrimination instruments.

Furthermore, the assessment explores the need to adapt the implementation of the Directive to new areas, such as the rapidly developing collaborative economy. The assessment recommends strengthening equality bodies in the Member States and raising awareness of the rights stemming from this and related directives.

It also suggests that the Commission entrust the European Equality Law Network with the provision of a thorough and comprehensive update of its 2009 report on the implementation of Directive 2004/113/EC, which could take into account the questionnaire elaborated in the final annex of this European implementation assessment.

• Primary Source

European Parliament: Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union: Publications available via the EU Bookshop http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/directorate-general-for-internal-policies-of-the-union-cbf.cKABstF7wAAAEjwYYY4e5K/

EP: EPRS: Study, January 2017: Gender Equal Access to Goods and Services Directive 2004/113/EC. European Implementation Assessment http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/593787/EPRS_STU(2017)593787_EN.pdf

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