This article analyses the protection which two European Union (EU) Directives, adopted in 2000, provide against discrimination on the grounds of racial and ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation. This protection is not the same for all these grounds, and this has led to what is often referred to in the literature as a hierarchy of discrimination grounds. The article examines these differences in protection against discrimination and the reasons for them and includes an analysis of the influence of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the development of this area of law. The argument in this article is that the CJEU has generally given a purposive and expansive interpretation to the provisions and has expanded the protection against discrimination in many cases, but three recent cases seem to form an exception to this. Possible reasons for this recent reticence are given.

中文翻译：

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欧盟反歧视法

本文分析了 2000 年通过的两项欧盟 (EU) 指令针对基于种族和民族血统、宗教或信仰、残疾、年龄和性取向的歧视提供的保护。对于所有这些理由，这种保护并不相同，这导致了文献中经常提到的歧视理由等级。本文探讨了在防止歧视方面的这些差异及其原因，并分析了欧盟法院 (CJEU) 判例法对该领域法律发展的影响。这篇文章的论点是，欧盟法院对条款总体上给出了有目的性和广泛性的解释，并在许多情况下扩大了对歧视的保护，但最近的三个案例似乎是一个例外。给出了最近这种沉默的可能原因。