It is increasingly recognised that discrimination can occur on the basis of more than one ground. A person who is discriminated against on grounds of her race might also suffer discrimination on grounds of her gender, her sexual orientation, her religion or belief, her age or her disability. Such discrimination can create cumulative disadvantage. Thus ethnic minority women, older women, black women and disabled women are among the most disadvantaged groups in many EU Member States. Similar cumulative disadvantage is experienced by gay or lesbian members of ethnic minorities; disabled black people; younger ethnic minority members or older disabled people. The report begins by briefly defining its terms and setting out the problems the concept of intersectionality aims to address. There are several different ways of conceptualising discrimination when it occurs on more than one ground. Terms such as ‘multiple discrimination,’ ‘cumulative discrimination,’ ‘compound discrimination,’ ‘combined discrimination’ and ‘intersectional discrimination’ are often used interchangeably although they might have subtly different meanings. There is no single settled terminology, either within legal systems or in the literature. Generally, however, there are three main ways in which such discrimination may manifest itself. The first is when a person suffers discrimination on different grounds on separate occasions. For the purposes of this report, this type of discrimination will be called ‘sequential multiple discrimination.’ A second manifestation occurs when a person is discriminated against on the same occasion but in two different ways. For example, a gay woman might claim that she has been subject to harassment both because she is a woman and because she is gay. Such discrimination can be said to be ‘additive’, in that each type of discrimination can be proved independently. For the purposes of this report, this type of discrimination will be called ‘additive multiple discrimination.’ The third manifestation is, however, of a different order in that discrimination does not simply consist in the addition of two sources of discrimination; the result is qualitatively different, or, as Crenshaw terms it, ‘synergistic.’1 For example, black women may experience discrimination in a way which is qualitatively different from either white women or black men. Black women share some experiences in common with both white women and black men, but they also differ in important respects. Thus while white women may be the victims of sex discrimination, they may also be the beneficiaries and even the perpetrators of racism. Conversely, black men may experience racism but be the beneficiaries and perpetrators of sexism. It is this type of discrimination which is the subject of this thematic report. It is usually referred to as ‘intersectional discrimination’ and it is this terminology which will be used in this report.

The National Roma Integration Strategies (NRIS) are usually not part of national Parliaments’ agendas; in consequence, the Member States’ executives are not sufficiently accountable for them on the national level and report on them only to the EC. On the national level, the Roma remain underrepresented in the Parliaments and their participation in national elections is estimated as significantly lower than the country averages. Roma ethnic political parties do not attract Roma voters; representation of Roma depends on mainstream political parties to place Roma candidates in high positions on their lists. On the other hand, Roma are often successful in getting elected into offices at the local level, mostly in municipalities with high proportions of the Roma population in structurally disadvantaged regions. Vote buying seems to be a problem across the five countries, but it is not systematically monitored. In some countries, instances of local governments and mayors controlling voting decisions made by Roma through regulating their access to public services (e.g., active labour market measures) were recorded. The NRIS is often associated with the development of documents and structures, rather than with the development of new policies, implementation of actions and their results, as these depend on the political priorities of the respective line ministries rather than on Roma-specific strategies. The content of the Roma integration policies and the reinforcement of the implementation of the measures planned in the NRIS is seldom in the hands of the National Roma Contact Points (NRCP), which mostly play a role in communication and reporting to the EC. This is not an institutional failure if there is another strong coordinating body for Roma inclusion policy planning and implementation in the Government. Despite diverse public administration models and degrees of decentralisation, the actual implementation of the NRIS and Roma integration policies in often depends more on the political will and priorities of local government leadership than it does on national leadership. On the one hand, a number of local governments are successful in Roma integration (independent of the support provided by the central Governments, which sometimes create additional administrative burdens for local governments’ initiatives); on the other hand, there are cases of local governments implementing deliberately repressive policies or discriminatory measures against Roma. However, in most cases, the municipalities do not have the necessary capacities, resources or interest in developing and implementing meaningful Roma inclusion strategies. The only exception is the Czech Republic, where the Government’s Agency for Social Inclusion, with the support of the ESF, provides local governments with assistance in the strategic planning of social inclusion. In all countries covered by the report, while the ESIFs remain the most important source of funding for local interventions in Roma integration, effective use of the ESIF requires skills that many local governments do not possess. Moreover, the ESIFs are planned in a top-down manner and often do not meet local needs. Wider recognition of the Roma does not replace or substitute for capacity and access to the knowledge and resources conducive to meaningful participation in policy planning and decision making. There is a major power imbalance between public authorities and civil society actors that is rarely addressed in the monitored countries. Tackling Roma integration, whether through mainstream programmes or through Roma-targeted programmes, represents an ongoing dilemma. The effectiveness of mainstream programmes in tackling Roma integration depends on the overall effectiveness of policy and would require substantial reforms. The country reports do not indicate if the needs of Roma are systematically taken into account when designing mainstream policies, yet the main criticism mounted by NGOs is a lack of monitoring mechanisms regarding mainstream policy outreach, outputs and their impacts on Roma. While state authorities typically view ethnic data collection as a violation of data protection legislation, NGOs often argue for gathering anonymised ethnic data to devise effective anti-discrimination and desegregation measures and particularly to assess the contribution of mainstream policies to Roma integration. Reluctance by public authorities to engage with ethnic data is often viewed as a pretext to avoid addressing the efficiency of policy interventions. In the updated NRISs, one can hardly find any baseline indicators or provisions for impact assessment based on such indicators. In all countries Roma integration policies and human rights policies, local development and Roma civil society largely depend on financing from the ESIF, EEA /Norway Grants and other external sources. Since the 2008 crisis, funding for support of civil society has significantly decreased. The clear-cut connection between specific services NGOs provide and their public funding has obvious drawbacks: NGOs often become dependent on good relations with public bodies and a contained critical voice can easily become the prerequisite for future contracts with them. The gender perspective in the NRISs is modest if it appears at all. Issues such as early marriage, violence against women, and trafficking are often essentialised as the consequences of deep-seated ethnic traditions. Policy plans and measures tend to endorse patriarchal norms by conceiving of Roma women’s role as primarily caring for the family and children.

Disabled women are at the intersection of various forms of discrimination on the grounds of gender and disability. This report provides an overview of relevant legislation and its limitations. It examines the ways this discrimination manifests itself in many domains of the private and public spheres. An intersectionality approach is seen as the most appropriate tool to analyse the complexity of this phenomenon and inform future policies and legislation, which will ensure participation and realisation of disabled women’s full potential.

Under Belgium’s federal structure, policy competences are divided between three entities: the Federal State, the regions (the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels Capital Regions) and the communities (Flemish, French and German speaking communities). This causes extreme confusion and significant gaps remain in the transposition of EU law. However, since 2008 each of the federate authorities has adopted new legislation, usually inspired by federal legislation. For example, labour relations such as access to employment, working conditions and pay issues fall within the jurisdiction of the federal authorities while vocational orientation and training fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federate authorities, i.e. the communities and regions. This is also true for other policy areas such as education (including school staff) or public housing (within the scope of Directive 2004/113/EC). Social security is still a federal matter, although the Sixth State Reform (2014) has allocated the competence in respect of family allowance to communities. The Act of 10 May 2007 aimed at combating discrimination between women and men (the Gender Act)1 is the legislative instrument that implements all EU directives concerning gender equality within the jurisdiction of the federal Parliament. Articles 5 and 6 of the Act of 10 May 2007 apply, inter alia, to working conditions including pay, to occupational social security schemes, and to any persons concerned. It deals with certain aspects of access to employment (e.g. in the federal public services, or concerning the standard conditions of access to the professions), but other aspects fall within the jurisdiction of the federate authorities (e.g. in their own public services, or concerning the management of the labour market). Vocational training is almost entirely a community matter.