A. Introduction

European Directives impose upon Germany the obligation to incorporate anti-discrimination provisions in its civil law. The anti-discrimination legislation is intended to provide effective civil law remedies against discrimination in everyday life by private persons, e.g. access to housing, restaurants and education. For the purposes of this article, discrimination may generally be defined as any treatment – including a refusal to deal with – by a private party that is less favorable than to another personand is conditioned upon a characteristic such as racial or ethnic origin, sex, etc.

Since the current German legal system does not grant any explicit protection from discrimination by private entities, the European Directives basically result in the obligation to create a new piece of legislation. A corresponding draft is dated 15 December 2004 and was controversially debated in German Parliament on 21 January 2005. Its entry-into-force is scheduled for the first half of the year 2005.

B. European Background

The prepared draft legislation is intended to implement several Directives into German law. The transformation periods partly ended mid to end of 2003. Even though all European anti-discrimination Directives include pertinent provisions with regard to general civil law (as opposed to labor law), the Directives 2000/43/EC and 2004/113/EC are primarily relevant for the purposes of this article. They prohibit discrimination based on racial and ethnic origin, as well as discrimination based on sex. The Directive 2000/43/EC limits the prohibition to discriminate to the membership of and involvement in an organization whose members carry out a particular profession and to healthcare, social advantages and education. Its main focus, however, lies on...