This legislation provides that each Member State shall have (at least) one Equality Body with the power to, among other, give independent assistance to victims of discrimination.

[1] They are empowered to counteract discrimination across the range of grounds including age, disability, gender, race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

[2] Equinet is an umbrella organisation for European equality bodies and has no mandate to provide any kind of legal assistance to individual victims of discrimination.

[3] Equinet builds upon the two-year project "Strengthening the co-operation between specialised bodies for the implementation of equal treatment legislation" (2002-2004).

Connect & Network - Equinet builds bridges between Equality Bodies and partners (policymakers, civil society organisations, European institutions, etc.)

Furthermore, a significant number of equality bodies are not fully independent from the government and the lack of resources prevent them from fulfilling their missions, such as conducting surveys.

The Revised GPR No.2, General Policy Recommendation on Equality bodies to combat racism and intolerance at national level, was adopted at ECRI's 74th plenary meeting in December 2017.

For updates on the standards process, see the Equinet webpage dedicated to standards for equality bodies[13] Most Equinet members belong to the European Union, while nine equality bodies come from outside the European Union (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo*, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway and Serbia).