Brussels uses law to protect workers from sex pests

Firms across Europe will be financially liable under a new law if they fail to protect employees from sexual harassment in the workplace.

The legislation will force employers to prove they took all possible preventive measures if one of their workers can show a prima facie case.

The legislation will mean drastic reform of the law of some EU countries, including Greece and Portugal, but only limited changes for Britain, which already has a higher level of protection than many other EU states.

The law, which covers a range of equal opportunities issues, does not take effect until 2005. It says employers will also be required to produce regular "equality reports" for staff, although details are not spelt out in the legislation.

Between 40 and 50 per cent of women and one in 10 men in EU countries say they have been sexually harassed at one point in their working life, according to a survey by the European Commission.

For the first time in EU law, the new provisions define sexual harassment. They say it consists of "unwanted conduct of a sexual nature with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, particularly when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".

The Commission says sexual harassment can usually be divided into three categories: "Verbal (remarks on figure/ looks, sexual jokes, verbal sexual advances); non-verbal (staring and whistling); and physical (from unsolicited physical contact to assault/rape)."

Harassers are overwhelmingly men and their victims are most likely to be women aged between 30 and 40, either single or divorced and having a lower level of education.

Although sexual harassment exists in all countries it is reported more frequently in northern Europe where the phenomenon is widely recognised and less often tolerated.

Anna Diamantopoulou, the European social affairs commissioner, said: "The general level of awareness of sexual harassment in member states is very poor." She added that she was once a victim of sexual harassment. "Now sexual harassment, absent from most national laws, will finally have a name in European law."