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Pursuant to § 27 (1) AGG, the FADA mandate stretches to cover every person’s request who believes they have experienced disadvantaging treatment based on one of the grounds listed under § 1 AGG. Along with counseling the affected party in cases of discrimination, the tasks of the FADA include, in accordance with § 27 (3) AGG, taking measures to prevent discrimination related to the categories of § 1 AGG, as well as conducting academic research on discrimination.

In the course of amending the AGG, it is advisable to also clarify the mandate of the FADA.

BUG advocates for the entire deletion of the disclosure obligation (Weiterleitungspflicht) in § 27 (2) s. 3 AGG, as these authorities do not or, only to a limited extent, have consulting capacities at their disposal.

Going forward, consideration should also be given to expanding the mandate of the FADA so that it could support claims in court (i.e. by submitting legal opinions) or even lodging claims itself. A fourth sentence should be added after § 27 (2) s. 3 that would explicitly authorize the ADA to, in reasonable cases, contribute to the claim (amicus curiae), or, to accompany particularly benchmark cases via assisting, via a litigation in its own name on behalf of the discriminated person (Prozessstandschaft) or via a collective action.

The right to participation or consultation should also be considered, so that the respective Federal Ministry can forward relevant discrimination legislative drafts in good time before a resolution is passed to FADA. The FADA should be granted the right to release an opinion.

The FADA should also serve a monitoring function. With this, the FADA would be an observatory agency for the guarantee of the objective implementation of the legislation governing equal pay between men and women in the same or similar occupations (Transparency Act for the Gender Pay Gap).

This monitoring function should also apply to so-called “Public Sector Duties”. Should Public Sector Duties – as already demanded in another section -be included in the AGG, they would need a monitoring body, for example, to observe the implementation of measures and to offer further training. Such public equal treatment obligations can only be adequately effective if an appropriately mandated agency verifies whether the objectives and results set are achieved. For this purpose, the appointment of the FADA as a monitoring agency should be considered. This requires a solid legal foundation which would also enable FADA to assign appropriate sanctions.