The Race Directive: Recycling Racial Inequality

<jats:p>The new european Race Directive is one of the latest measures adopted by the Council of Ministers under its enlarged powers aimed at combating racism in the EU. This Race Directive reflects the strategic thinking of EU policy aimed at combating institutionally racist constraints on the free movement of persons within the Community. Nevertheless, this paper argues that the effectiveness of the Directive is likely to be limited. This potential impediment is premised on two factors: the textual ambivalence that surrounds the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ and the scope of the instrument. In turn, these restrictions are indicative of a power struggle between the EU and nation states, a struggle that threatens to sideline the broader picture of institutional racism and how to defeat it.</jats:p>