European Union law bans discrimination by employers, on grounds of age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion/belief and sexual orientation. EU law also bans discrimination by providers of goods, facilities and services, on grounds of gender, gender reassignment and race. The new proposed Directive would ban discrimination by providers of goods, facilities and services, on the four other grounds. This discrimination is mostly already banned in the UK, except on grounds of age.

The Directive needs to be agreed first by all 27 EU countries. The UK Government issued a consultation paper to inform their approach to the negotiations on the details of the Directive.

Attached below is the Equality Network's response to that consultation.

Submission to the UK Government on the proposed EU equality Directive (51k)