President: A. Di Paolantonio
Speaker: D. Cavallari
The outcome in summary
The Labor Section requested, pursuant to art. 276 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Court of Justice of the Union to rule, by way of preliminary ruling, on the following questions of interpretation of Union law:
a) whether European Union law must be interpreted, possibly also on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as meaning that there is legitimacy for the family caregiver of a severely disabled minor – who deduces that he has suffered a indirect discrimination in the workplace as a consequence of the assistance activity provided by him – to activate the anti-discrimination protection that would be recognized to the same disabled person, if the latter were the worker, by Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000, establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and working conditions;
b) if, in the event of an affirmative answer to question under a), European Union law must be interpreted, possibly also on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in the sense that it burdens the employer of the caregiver the obligation to adopt reasonable solutions to guarantee, also in favor of said caregiver, compliance with the principle of equal treatment towards other workers, on the model of what is provided for disabled workers by art. 5 of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000, which establishes a general framework for equal treatment in employment and working conditions;
c) if, in the event of an affirmative answer to question under a) and/or to question under b), European Union law must be interpreted, possibly also on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in sense that, for the purposes of the application of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of the Council of 27 November 2000, a caregiver must be understood as any person, belonging to the family circle or de facto cohabitant, who takes care in a domestic environment, even informally and on a free, quantitatively significant, exclusive, continuous and long-term basis of a person who, due to his/her serious disability, is absolutely not self-sufficient in carrying out the daily acts of life or if European Union law must be interpreted in the sense that the definition of caregiver is broader or narrower than the one above.