European Union law applied to the United Kingdom until 31 December 2020, recalled the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in a judgment handed down on Tuesday 19 May (case C-350/24).
In France, a French national took legal action in 2013, claiming that she had been the victim of sex discrimination and harassment in her employment with Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank, under an employment contract governed by UK law.
In her view, the French courts had interpreted UK law in a way that was contrary to Directive 2006/54 on equal treatment for men and women in matters of employment.
Referred to by the French Court of Cassation, the CJEU points out that, although the United Kingdom left the Union on 1 February 2020, EU law applied during the pre-Brexit transition period until the end of 2020. Neither the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU nor the Agreement on the Orderly Withdrawal of the United Kingdom provide for EU law to cease to apply retroactively to legal situations arising before that date, it emphasised.
The Court therefore ruled that the directive’s rules on the burden of proof in discrimination cases continue to apply to a dispute concerning an employment relationship that arose before the end of the pre-Brexit transition period, even if the court rules after that date. An interpretation to the contrary would undermine legal certainty, it concludes.
To see the judgment of the Court of Justice: https://aeur.eu/f/lyz (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)