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European integration and legal culture: indirect sex discrimination in the French legal system*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to examine whether legal culture has an influence on the implementation of EC law in member states by means of one case study; the failure of the French legal community to recognise and apply a prohibition against indirect as well as direct discrimination, which is well established in EC legislation and case law. It is suggested that legal cultural factors may have some role to play. The focus of French legal culture on the importance of legal certainty has contributed to an emphasis on a formal concept of equality within the law, to which the concept of indirect discrimination is not suited. The paradoxical role of the French judge, who is given very little power in theory and who is therefore able to take the inevitable policy decisions behind the cloak of judicial anonymity, means that she is able to avoid the obligation placed on her by EC law to implement a prohibition on indirect sex discrimination.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1999
Footnotes
*
I would like to thank Maria Drakopoulou, Susan Millns and Geoffrey Samuel for their helpful comments throughout the writing of this paper, as well as the readers for Legal Studies.
References
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54. Above n 53.
55. Above n 52.
56. An example of this can be seen in Le Monde in November 1997, where it was reported that the Jospin government had not yet appointed anyone to be responsible for women's rights issues, making France the only European country not to have such an appointment. Perhaps significant is the assertion that many people who were offered the job did not want it, suggesting a lack of perception of the importance of such issues. (Le Monde 5 November 1997, p 11).
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64. It can be noted that this approach to equality, as well as having implications for the concept of indirect discrimination, is likely to come into conflict with the recent support given by both the Commission and the Court of Justice to the idea of positive discrimination; see Marschall v Land Nordrhein-Westfalen Case C-409195 (1998) IRLR 39 and the Commission communication on the interpretation of Kalanke v Frei-und Hansestadt Bremen Case C-450/93 (1995) ECR-1 305 1. Positive action in some forms has also been approved at Treaty level; para 4 of the new art 141 (formerly art 119) of the Treaty, as amended by the Treaty of Amsterdam, reads: ‘With a view to ensuring full equality in practice between men and women in working life, the principle of equal treatment shall not prevent any member state from maintaining or adopting measures providing for specific advantages in order to make it easier for the under-represented sex to pursue a vocational activity or to prevent or compensate for disadvantages in professional careers.’
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73. See Home Office v Holmes (1984) ICR 678.
74. Meade-Hill v British Council (1995) ICR 847.
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76. Above n 70.
77. Trans Nugent (New York: Hafner, 1949), at p 152.
78. Rivero, above n 67.
79. For more details on this historical background, see Dawson, above n 48; and T Sauvel ‘Histoire du jugement motivé’ (1955) Revue du Droit Public 5.
80. See R J Cummins ‘The General Principles of Law, Separation of Powers and Theories of Judicial Decision in France’ (1986) ICLQ 594.
81. M H Davis ‘A Government of Judges: An Historical Re-View’ (1987) 35 AJCL 559.
82. See Goutal, above n 49.
83. Above n 48.
84. Cour de Cassation, Social Chamber, 8 October 1996, decision no 3578 Renault SA cl Chevalier et autres.
85. It would, of course, be useful to look at the discussion documents which were used in the judicial decision-making process, such as the report of the juge-rapporteur. However, as Lasser has pointed out, these reports are rarely published and remarkably inaccessible to the researcher, and none were available in this instance.
86. Articles L 123-1 and L 140-2 Code du travail.
87. See s V of the Code du Travail, which contains a number of provisions for the protection of mothers, not all of which are related to the physical needs of pregnancy and childbirth. Most of this legislation was introduced before the 1983 legislation, and has not been modified in order to comply with the principle of égalité professionelle. In addition, art 19 of the 1983 legislation, which allowed for the maintenance of special rights for mothers in pre-existing collective agreements, was found by the ECJ, in Commission v French Republic (No 1) Case 312/86 (1988) ECR 63 15, to be contrary to the equal treatment directive, because such special rights were contrary to the principle of equal treatment.
88. Von Colson and Kamann v Land Nordrhein- Westfalen Case 14/83 (1984) ECR 1891; Marleasing SA v La Comercial Internacional de Alimentacion SA Case C-106/89 (1990) ECR 1-4135.
89. Above nn 38 and 40, and associated text.
90. (1998), above n 47.
91. The other two were the two night-work cases; above n 20.
92. Above n 42.