The purchaser, who was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, lived in Denmark and acquired Danish nationality. He and his partner, a Danish citizen born in Denmark, purchased a second-hand car from a car dealership, partly financed by a loan granted by a credit institution. For the purpose of processing the loan application, the dealership e-mailed the names, address, national identity numbers and copies of the applicants’ Danish driving licences to the credit institution. Having established that, according to the information on the purchaser’s driving licence, he was born outside the European Union, the credit institution requested, in accordance with its internal procedural rules, additional proof of identity in the form of a copy of his passport or residence permit. The purchaser was of the view that the request was discriminatory and referred the matter to the Equal Treatment Board, which awarded him compensation on grounds of indirect discrimination within the meaning of article 2(2)(a) of Council Directive 2000/43/EC. The District Court, Viborg, Denmark, upheld that decision, and expressed the view that the treatment amounted to direct discrimination within the meaning of article 2(2)(b) of the Directive. The credit institution contended that it was required to make the request in view of its obligations under rules on the prevention of money laundering and appealed to the High Court of Western Denmark, which stayed the proceedings and referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling, the question, in essence, whether article 2(2)(a) and (b) of Directive 2000/43 precluded the practice of a credit institution which required a customer whose driving licence indicated a country of birth other than a member state of the European Union or the EFTA to produce additional identification in the form of a copy of the customer’s passport or residence permit.
On the reference—
Held, that for the purposes of ascertaining whether a person had been subject to unfavourable treatment, it was necessary to carry out, not a general abstract comparison, but a specific concrete comparison, in the light of the favourable treatment in question. It followed that the argument that the use of a neutral criterion, namely a person’s country of birth, was generally more likely to affect persons of a “given ethnicity” than “other persons” could not be accepted. The same applied to the argument that the use of that criterion would place at a disadvantage persons whose ethnic origin was that of a country other than a member state of the European Union or the EFTA. It followed that the practice did not give rise for the person concerned, to different treatment indirectly based on ethnic origin and could not, therefore, be said to give rise to different treatment on grounds of ethnic origin within the meaning of article 1, in conjunction with article 2(2)(a) and (b), of Council Directive 2000/43/EC. Accordingly, article 2(2)(a) and (b) of Directive 2000/43 did not preclude the practice of a credit institution which required a customer whose driving licence indicated a country of birth other than a member state of the European Union or the EFTA to produce additional identification in the form of a copy of the customer’s passport or residence permit (judgment, paras 32–34, 36–37, operative part).
C Led-Jensen for the credit institution.
C Thorning, agent, and R Holdgaard for the Danish Government.
D Martin and initially, M Clausen, and, subsequently, L Grønfeldt, agents, for the European Commission.