The Advocate General has issued an opinion regarding the Danish ghetto policy. This is a hugely important case regarding direct discrimination by ethnicity, and the opinion from the Advocate General recognises this fact.

The policy is extremely harmful. Copying from the CJEU press release:

The Danish legislation on public housing distinguishes between several types of neighbourhoods with unfavourable socio-economic situations in terms of their levels of unemployment, crime, education, and income. The areas in which, in addition to an unfavourable socio-economic situation, the proportion of immigrants from non-Westerncountries and their descendants has exceeded 50% for the last five years have then been categorised as‘transformation areas’ (formerly known as ‘hard ghettos’). The law requires the public housing associations owning such areas to draw up a development plan setting out how the proportion of public housing units in thetransformation areas is to be reduced to 40% by 1 January 2030. This may include the sale of properties to private developers, demolition, or conversion of family housing into housing for young people. In such cases, the leases of the previous tenants must be terminated.

The Advocate General finds direct discrimination due to two issues: first, "the legislation puts those tenants in a precarious position in relation to security of their right to a home, thus resulting in their less favourable treatment in comparison to tenants of other neighbourhoods in a comparable situation, in which the majority of the population is of ‘Western’ origin". And second: "the ethnic criterion used by Danish legislation stigmatises the ethnic group whose structural disadvantage in their ability to integrate into Danish society was recognised, thus curtailing rather than enhancing their chances to integrate into that society".

#law #EU #HousingPolicy