Enforcing EU equality law through collective redress: Lagging behind?

Whilst the enforcement of EU law was initially based on individual and institutional “vigilance”, it has progressively expanded to embrace collective redress. However, collective redress mechanisms remain mostly nested in market-oriented areas, like competition law, consumer protection and data protection. Drawing on EU secondary law and soft law, this article contends that collective redress procedures should also be encouraged in more socially-oriented areas, focusing, in particular, on EU equality law. This is essential not only to address the rise of xenophobia in Europe, but also to ensure the substantive supremacy and uniform application of EU equality law, and to achieve more consistency within EU law.