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Residents of a Copenhagen neighbourhood that became an international symbol of a law in Denmark<\/a> known as the \u201cghetto law\u201d have said they are confident they can strike the law down in the Danish courts after the top EU court ruled that it may be unlawful.<\/p>\n The controversial legislation, dating from 2018, allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas labelled \u201cparallel societies\u201d by the government, where at least half of residents have a \u201cnon-western\u201d background. Formerly, the government referred to these neighbourhoods as \u201cghettoes\u201d.<\/p>\n The law states that if these areas also have unfavourable socioeconomic conditions \u2013 for example high levels of unemployment or crime \u2013 authorities must cut social housing by 40%, including by selling or demolishing properties or terminating the lease of tenants by 2030.<\/p>\n In a long-awaited judgment on Thursday on whether the laws targeting these \u201ctransformation areas\u201d are racially discriminatory, the European court of justice said the legislation may be unlawful under the EU\u2019s race equality directive.<\/p>\n In a preliminary ruling, the ECJ stated that the law might lead to an increased risk of early lease termination and eviction for residents of these areas compared with those in neighbourhoods with similar socioeconomic conditions but lower levels of immigration.<\/p>\n It would be for Danish courts to look at whether there was \u201ca difference in treatment based on the ethnic origin of the majority of the inhabitants of those areas, thus resulting in the inhabitants of these areas being treated less favourably,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n They would also have to determine whether the law, although worded in a \u201cneutral manner\u201d, actually leads to \u201cpersons belonging to certain ethnic groups being placed at a particular disadvantage,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n The decision is less emphatic than a previous statement by Tamara ?apeta, a European court of justice advocate general, who said in February<\/a> that tenants whose leases were terminated \u201csuffer direct discrimination on the basis of the ethnic criterion\u201d.<\/p>\n Despite this, lawyers, human rights organisations and residents said the EU decision marked a legal victory for the campaign, which they said they were confident they could win in the domestic courts next year.<\/p>\n