Europe 'ban on sexual harassment'

An EC study found up to 50% of women got unwanted sexual proposals

Sexual harassment in the workplace could be outlawed right across the European Union.

If a new law is approved by the European Parliament the EU will for the first time have a clear legal definition of sexual harassment, commissioners say.

The law will also reinforce protection for employees, both male and female, who complain about discrimination, and will acknowledge the right of women to return to their jobs after maternity leave.

Anna Diamantopoulou suffered harassment herself

"Just the presence of such a law will encourage women to tell of sexual harassment in public, to react, to go on, and not to accept it in a passive way," said EU Employment and Social Commissioner, Anna Diamantopoulou.

The EU commissioner, who counts herself as a victim, said the aim is not to have a tidal wave of sexual harassment suits.

"It is preventative," she told reporters. "We want to nip harassment problems in the bud."

Awareness low

The proposals come a day after EU employment ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, adopted an unprecedented EU-wide directive that bans racial discrimination at work, school and elsewhere.

According to a 1999 study for the European Commission, up to 50% of EU women have faced "unwanted sexual proposals," yet "the level of awareness of this phenomenon in the member states is very poor."

According to Anna Diamantopoulou 35% of women, and 10% of men, have been the subject of sexual harassment at work.

As a student she suffered herself.

"When I was 19, I was an engineering student, working part-time," she said.

"I had no possibility of redress, I could only quit my job and go somewhere else."

While France and Belgium have laws explicitly banning sexual harassment, most other EU member states have only partial legislation - and Portugal and Greece have nothing on the books at all, she said.

The European Union previously adopted a harassment directive in 1976, when it was called the European Economic Community, but the EU commissioner said changing times and growing case law merited an update.

The proposed law defines harassment: "Sexual harassment shall be deemed to be discrimination on the grounds of sex at the workplace when an unwanted conduct related to sex takes place with the purposes or effect of affecting the dignity of a person and/or creating an intimidating, hostile, offensive or disturbing environment, in particular if a person's rejection of, or submission to, such conduct is a basis for a decision which affects that person."