A Foreign Body in Employment Law? – The Impact of EU Accession on Hungarian Anti-Discrimination Law in Employment – Part II

The purpose of this series of articles is to give an overview of the impact of the EU law on equal treatment on relevant Hungarian labor law. In the previous part (Part I), a short description was given on the status of national provisions as existed before the implementation of the relevant EU directives, highlighting the most important regulation needs and challenges identified by the then relevant academic literature. In the present part (Part II), the main features of EU and Hungarian law concerning equal treatment in employment is described; further it is evaluated, how far Hungarian labor law has reached in the implementation process in the past 15 years in terms of determining the protected characteristics and the definition of discriminatory conducts. Part III is going to provide further analyse on the achievements of the implementation process (rules on burden of proof, the structure of exemptions and justifications, sanctions and remedies), and, as a conclusion, the main challenges of the oncoming 15 years are addressed in this field. The development of the case law of Hungarian courts is followed up, which was recently summarized and evaluated by the Case Law Analyzing Group of the Kúria appointed to scrutinize the judicial practice of equal treatment regulation in the field of labor law