Legislative Gridlock and the Hierarchy of Rights: Explaining the Failure of the EU Horizontal Equality Directive

In 2008, the European Commission launched a proposal for a Horizontal Equal Treatment Directive (2008/0140/APP). The directive intended to undo the so-called hierarchy of rights that emerged with the adoption of two earlier directives in 2000. Whereas the Race Equality Directive (2000/43/EC) had a wide ambit, the scope of the Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC) was primarily limited to the realm of employment. This meant that anti-discrimination protections on the grounds of race and ethnicity were much stronger than those concerning age, disability, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Commission’s 2008 proposal aimed to undo this asymmetry. Yet, the proposal was never adopted. The Commission even withdrew the proposal at the start of 2025 (only to mention it again in its LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030). As a result, many EU citizens remain to discrimination. This paper aims to explain the slow death of the Horizontal Equality Directive. It draws on an extensive data collection that includes official documents, publications by advocacy groups, and semi-structured interviews to chart the process between the proposal of the directive in 2008 and its removal from the Commission’s work programme in 2025.