Paper Titles & Abstracts

The paper analyzes Moldovan and Ukrainian antidiscrimination laws adopted during 2012. These laws were a part of the EU conditionality approach which implies certain rewards for the partner countries for implementation of reforms in specific spheres. It is a clear example of the EU soft policies which push the national government to adopt these reforms and on the other hand makes the EU an influential player in its direct neighborhood. Thus, the adoption of these laws is without any doubt seen as a part of Europeanization processes, harmonization of national legislations of these Eastern Partnership countries with the acquis communautaire. At the same time, the implementation of these laws triggered considerable debates on their value. In both the cases, the laws have a lot of shortcomings, particularly because of their limited lists of affirmative characteristics and marginal consideration of the civic society's comments. Finally, the laws raise the question of subordination of legal acts since they neither supersede other relevant legal acts, nor provide qualitatively new affirmative characteristics, nor imply amendments to other relevant legal acts. Furthermore unclear methods of implementation of these laws do not maintain an effective mechanism to protect people from the practical discrimination. The laws may therefore imply that Moldovan and Ukrainian systems inherited from the Soviet doctrine which implies quite a normative approach towards the law and therefore limits the scope of its interpretation in ensuring real protection of individuals and groups from practical discrimination that exist in the societies of these countries