London, 31 July 2015

On 16 July 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a preliminary ruling in a case of alleged discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, referred to it by a Bulgarian court. In a welcome decision, the Court provided important guidance on the application of Directive 2000/43/EC (the Race Equality Directive) to a determination of whether an electricity company’s placing of electricity meters in majority-Roma districts at a height where users could not read them was discrimination. In so doing, the Court made comments which indicate its support for a finding that the practice constitutes direct discrimination.