Can the EU deliver social justice and be representative of all its citizens?
There is a degree of consensus that inequalities persist in the EU across a range of grounds. However, whether we need a quantitative analysis of the extent of discrimination and how and where it occurs in the EU, is an issue that stirs up more controversy.
Trevor Phillips is an outspoken advocate of equality and integration and will argue that anti-discrimination and equality need to be placed more firmly at the heart of the European Social Model. For this to happen, there must first be rigorous data collection, coordinated at the level of the EU. Tying his reflections into the broader debate about how Social Europe can deliver more social justice, he will consider areas where data could provide the information to understand how, why and where discrimination persists in the EU and how we can address it.
Jonathan Faull has been closely involved in setting up the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and the European Institute for Gender Equality. He will enter into discussion with Trevor Phillips on the question of how far data could address gaps in equality policy and where we expect such data to reveal fundamental mechanisms of inequality.
The discussion was chaired by Paul Adamson of The Centre