Abstract

The essay has been prompted by the relevance that protection against discrimination is today ensured in a labour law system, which, for quite some time, has been affected by an increasingly obvious phenomenon of redefinition of law-making rules in a framework of economic and financial crisis as well as market globalization and internationalization. Within these coordinates, the author retraced the evolution of the antidiscrimination law and the measure of the effectiveness of anti-discrimination protection that does not depend only on the development of the prohibited types of discrimination – which the supra-national legislation has progressively enriched and refined – but also by the procedural means which enable employees to show concrete evidence of acts of discrimination and offer them effective remedies. The author highlights the crucial role of case law in guaranteeing the effectiveness of anti-discrimination protection in a continuous balance between economic freedoms and fundamental rights.