HK Danmark (Ring and Skouboe Werge): Interpreting EU Equality Law in Light of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has handed down surprisingly few rulings related to disability discrimination under the Employment Equality Directive (Directive 2000/78/EC)in the 13 years since its adoption. Aside from the case considered in this article, the most significant judgments to date have been Chacón Navas (2006), in which the Court elaborated a definition of disability for the purposes of the Directive, and Coleman (2008), in which the Court held that the Directive protected a worker from direct discrimination and harassment on the grounds that she had a child with a disability (discrimination by association).

The case of HK Danmark (Ring and Skouboe Werge) marks a significant addition to this slowly emerging body of case law, and amounts to the Court’s most wide ranging consideration of disability discrimination to date. In HK Danmark (Ring and Skouboe Werge) the Court ‘revisited’ its definition of disability as originally developed in Chacón Navas, addressed the provision on reasonable accommodation for the first time in any detail, and, also for the first time, explored the prohibition of indirect discrimination in the context of disability. Moreover, this was the first case in which the Court was called upon to interpret the disability provisions of the Directive following the EU conclusion of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This combination of factors make HK Danmark (Ring and Skouboe Werge) a particularly rich and important judgment for understanding how the Employment Equality Directive addresses disability discrimination, and, more generally, the relevance of the CRPD for the interpretation of EU law in the context of disability.

This article explores the key elements of the judgment, taking account of the Opinion of Advocate General Kokott. The article begins by discussing the factual background to the case and the questions submitted for a preliminary ruling, before proceeding to consider the most important and significant dimensions to the ruling.