A senior adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has found that Denmark’s “ghetto law” constitutes discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin.
According to Danish law, neighborhoods that have more than 50% of residents from “non-western” backgrounds are labeled as a “ghetto,” now rebranded as a “parallel society.” The country’s “ghetto law” allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in these areas.
Tamara ?apeta, Advocate General of the ECJ, said in a statement that “the division between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ immigrants and their descendants is based on ethnic origin.”
The statement continued to explain, “She considers that, although ‘non-westerners’ are an ethnically diverse group, what unites that group is not a commonality of factors that form ‘ethnicity’ within that group, but rather the perception by the Danish legislature that this group does not possess the characteristics of the other group, the ‘westerners’.”
?apeta also found that despite those with leases terminated were not selected on the basis of their non-western origin, “they nevertheless suffer direct discrimination on the basis of the ethnic criterion.”
Image: Leif Jørgensen, WikiCommons