The EU accession to the ECHR as an opportunity for conceptual clarity in European equality law: the new European paradigm of full equality

In the last few decades, European equality law seems to have entered a coming-of-age stage. The principle of equal treatment in its various forms and guises, refined through legislative developments and judicial interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), has become a core element of the European normative sphere, both as an individual nondiscrimination right under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and as a foundational component of European Union (EU) law and policy. Arguably the most significant feature of this transformative process is the gradual repositioning of the meaning of equality towards more substantive lines. The reference to full equality in Protocol 12 of the ECHR and Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) is an eloquent, albeit tacit, admission that existing inequalities cannot be adequately redressed through a formulaic and neutral principle that creates primarily negative and minimally positive obligations.