Race, Housing and EU Law: The CJEU & the Danish Housing Case (Case C-417/23, Slagelse Almennyttige Boligselskab, Afdeling Schackenborgvænge)
Judge Tamara Ćapeta, Advocate General, Court of Justice of the European Union;
Prof. Dr Bruno de Witte, Emeritus Professor of European Union Law, Maastricht University;
Dr Hanna Eklund, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Copenhagen;
Nozizwe Dube, PhD candidate, International Law, Maastricht University.
What is the scope of ‘ethnic origin’ in EU law? What are the limits of discrimination and what is the role of the CJEU in protecting and promoting EU values? This webinar provides an opportunity to think about these questions in the context of the judgment in Case C-417/23 Danish Public Housing Law (18 December 2025). Denmark has become a multi-racial and multi-cultural society - according to Statistics Denmark, 11% of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants are of foreign origin, of whom 58% are from a country considered “non-western”, a category including all countries in Africa, South and Central America, Asia and Oceania (other than Australia and New Zealand). Therefore, is the use of ‘non-western’ to determine the unilateral termination of leases under public housing law contrary to Article 2(2)(a) and (b) of the Race Equality Directive?
The Institute of European and Comparative Law (IECL) of the University of Oxford and the European Law Review bring together in discussion leading academics as well as Tamara Ćapeta, Advocate General in Case C-417/23.
Judge Tamara Ćapeta (Advocate General, CJEU)
Tamara Ćapeta has served as Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union since October 2021. She was previously a Professor of EU Law at the University of Zagreb, where she co-founded the Department of European Public Law and led several major academic initiatives. Her work focuses on judicial legitimacy and the constitutional dimensions of EU law.
Prof. Dr Bruno de Witte
Bruno de Witte is Emeritus Professor of European Union Law at Maastricht University and a part-time Professor at the European University Institute. A leading scholar of EU constitutional law, his work covers the relationship between European, national, and international legal orders, the protection of fundamental rights, and the cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe.
Dr Hanna Eklund
Hanna Eklund is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in European Law from the European University Institute and is the Principal Investigator of the project Colonialism and EU Law: Writing Legal Histories for the Future. Her research focuses on EU law, constitutionalism, and the relationship between law and social change.
Nozizwe Dube
Nozizwe Dube is a PhD candidate in International Law at Maastricht University. Her research offers a critical race feminist analysis of the EU equality framework, with a focus on intersectional discrimination and the role of decoloniality in European legal structures. In 2023, she was selected as one of the twelve Faces of Science by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.