On 6 February 2014 EIOPA (the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) published a report on EU member states’ implementation of the Test-Achats ruling.
The Test-Achats decision was handed down on 1 March 2011 and made gender-based pricing in insurance contracts a contravention of EU law. From 21 December 2012 all new contracts of insurance had to be gender-neutral.
Accordingly, member states which previously permitted gender-based pricing of insurance needed to adapt their national regulations in line with the Test-Achats ruling. The deadline for implementation was 21 December 2012.
EIOPA has undertaken a mapping exercise to establish which member states implemented the Test-Achats ruling on time. The recent EIOPA report summarises the results.
The majority of member states managed to implement on time but a few were late.
Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal reported that legislation implementing the ruling was in the process of being adopted at the time of the EIOPA review.
Iceland and Norway (two of the EEA EFTA states and therefore not bound by the Test-Achats ruling) indicated that they intend to implement the ruling on a voluntary basis.
The UK met the deadline in time, making an amendment to the Equality Act (effective on 21 December 2012) to repeal the opt-out previously in place making it forbidden for UK insurers to use gender-specific pricing.