Strategic Enforcement: Powers and Competences of Equality Bodies

This report  aims to provide equality bodies with an insight into the competences and powers of strategic enforcement that are available to the individual bodies, how they work, what can be achieved with these powers and how they can be strategically employed, and in this way facilitate the bodies' work towards uniform implementation of EU anti-discrimination law and levelling-up of legal protection for victims of discrimination.

The report draws on responses to a questionnaire developed by Equinet Working Group 2 and circulated to Equinet members in order to identify the competences and powers available to the equality bodies, the criteria that each body uses to decide on which power to use and when to use it, how the powers work in combination, the bodys’ assessment of the power, and what powers the bodies in their own opinion need in order to complete their tasks and fulfil their role efficiently.

Downloadable files

Strategic enforcement - French version (1344kb)
Strategic Enforcement - Powers and Competences of Equality Bodies (1201kb)

CONTENTS:         

• Preface by Bjørn Dilou Jacobsen and Eddie Omar Rosenberg Khawaja, Moderators of Equinet Working Group 2
• Legal Assistance to Individuals: Powers and Procedures of Effective and Strategic Individual Enforcement by Bjørn Dilou Jacobsen and Eddie Omar Rosenberg Khawaja
•  Formal Investigations and Inquiries by Myra White
• Interventions and Amicus Curiae Applications: Making Individual Enforcement More Effective by Eilís Barry
• Positive Duties to Promote Equality by Lowri Griffiths
• Annex Equinet Questionnaire on the Strategic Enforcement of the Powers of Equality Bodies

This is the first of two reports to be produced by Equinet's Working Group 2. The second report, due in 2006, will focus on more specific issues regarding the effective and strategic enforcement of the equality bodies' powers.