Denmark named it, and Europe's court drew the line
Within seven years Denmark produced a document that supports the argument and one that limits it. Our rule: both go in.
What the law says
In 2018 the Danish parliament adopted a package amending the public-housing acts. It did something European legislatures usually avoid: it wrote a numerical definition into statute.
"Ved et ghettoområde forstås et boligområde, hvor andelen af
indvandrere og efterkommere fra ikkevestlige lande overstiger 50 pct., og hvor mindst to
af kriterierne i stk. 1 er opfyldt."
L 38 (2018/1), definition clause - (our translation) A ghetto area means a housing area where the share of immigrants and descendants from non-Western countries exceeds 50 per cent, and where at least two of the criteria in subsection 1 are met.
Denmark legislated the wider policy under its own term, parallelsamfund (parallel societies), not an activist coinage.
What the court said
On 18 December 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on that criterion.
Under Article 2(2)(a) of Directive 2000/43/EC, the Danish criterion targeting areas where "immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants" exceed 50% can constitute direct discrimination based on ethnic origin.
Judgment C-417/23, Slagelse Almennyttige Boligselskab - operative part, via EUR-Lex
Why we publish both
Citing only the statute would show a Northern European social democracy naming a problem in law, something people are often told does not exist. Citing the judgment alone would treat the whole policy as settled prejudice.
The record holds both: a European legislature legislated, and a European court found that its line runs into the anti-discrimination directive - because the line was drawn on origin, not on conduct, ideology, or organisation.
That distinction is the architecture of this archive: its subject is an ideology and its organisations, never a population. The Danish criterion shows what happens when a state puts a demographic proxy in place of the thing it means to address: the measure becomes legally vulnerable, and the argument beneath it easier to dismiss.
So the register carries both rows, and the harms entry for the statute is annotated to say so: it is never to be cited alone.
The general rule
For this archive to be worth citing in a committee room or a newsroom, whoever checks it has to find the counter-document already there, put there by us before they went looking.