European Commission suing Government

The European Commission has initiated legal action against the Government for failing to correctly copy a directive on race discrimination into Irish law.

The Commission has sent the Government a letter of "formal notice", the first stage in formal legal action, and the Government faces being taken to the European Court of Justice if the Commission remains unhappy with its response to the formal notice.

The Government previously received an informal letter from the Commission on the same issue in August 2004.

The race discrimination directive was adopted in June 2000 and was due to be placed on the Irish statute books by July 2003. The directive implements "the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin", according to the Commission.

According to a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, the Government responded to the Commission's informal letter in 2004 and "whilst the Commission were mostly satisfied, there still were a number of points remaining unresolved in their view. Thus the letter of formal notice was issued".

The spokesperson said, "the points raised are of a relatively minor technical nature and the Department is consulting with the Attorney General's office to formulate a response.

"However, the Department are quite satisfied that they do not constitute major issues and we hope to be able to satisfy the Commission that Ireland is fully compliant with the terms of the Directive."

The spokesperson said the "transposition" of the legislation was "not a matter of copying the Directives word for word" and that "this dialogue between the Commission and member states is a normal part of EU business".

All of the 15 countries of the "old EU" (that is, prior to the accession of ten further countries in 2004) have either received letters of formal notice or have already been in the European Court of Justice on this issue.

Neither the Commission nor the Government have stated what the Commission's particular concerns relating to Ireland are. However, the Equality Authority has previously raised concerns that limits on the maximum compensation to be paid in discrimination cases may infringe the race discrimination directive (as recently reported in Industrial Relations News).

Colin Murphy