Taken from SSRN website
Whereas gender, race and ethnicity have been placed at the very center of the rediscovery of European Union anti-discrimination law in the last decades, religion seems to stand in the backyard of the European Union Agenda. Efforts to tackle discrimination based on religious belief have not yet invested all areas of European Union anti-discrimination law, whose preference has been progressively devoted to other factors, even by leaving religion aside from the material scope of the Race Directive 43/2000/CE. The Employment Equality Directive, in fact, only prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion and belief in the fields of employment and occupation, vocational training, membership of employer and employee organizations, though refraining from following the Race Directive approach as to the width of protection. Freedom of religion within the European Union is then enshrined under Article 10, Freedom of thought, conscience and religion, of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights together with the general guarantee of non-discrimination under Article 21 and that of cultural religious and linguistic diversity set forth under Article 22.
