According to the ECJ, as discussed in the previous Part, Union law does not prohibit reverse discrimination and the Member States must decide individually whether or not to remedy it. Since it is up to the Member States to deal with the issue, their perspectives are a crucial part of research into reverse discrimination. Hence, in this Part, reverse discrimination will be examined from a variety of national perspectives.

Whereas previous monographs on reverse discrimination have focused on the perspective of only one Member State, the approach taken here is to compare the perspectives of five Member States. Alongside cases in the author's home country of Belgium, cases of reverse discrimination from France, Italy, Germany and Austria are also discussed. The choice of these five particular Member States has been explained in the section concerning methodology in the book's general introduction.

DIFFERENT NATIONAL AUTHORITIES AND DIFFERENT PRINCIPLES AND RULES

In general, it can be stated that a Member State has a choice between either treating its own nationals in purely internal situations more severely than ‘mobile’ Union citizens, or tackling the reverse discrimination by extending the more favourable treatment provided by Union law to its own nationals in purely internal situations. This choice can be made by different actors at the national level and they may use different principles and rules in order to assess any given situation of reverse discrimination.

In particular, both the legislative, the executive and judicial powers may be in the position to decide whether or not to remedy a situation of reverse discrimination. First, the national (or regional) legislator can take the initiative to remedy reverse discrimination by extending the more favourable treatment, provided by Union law, to their own nationals in purely internal situations. This will be called ‘autonomous legislative alignment’. Conversely, when the legislator leaves the reverse discrimination untouched – often implicitly and simply by not extending the more favourable EU provisions to purely internal situations – it is possible that the national courts may assess the situation of reverse discrimination in the light of the principles and rules enshrined in national law. Finally, the executive power is also able to make a choice for or against reverse discrimination in some areas.