This dissertation investigates the creation and implementation of a European Union law requiring states to implement Anglo-American style racial antidiscrimination policies. The dissertation de-centers the courts, and instead focuses on institutions, politics, and interest groups that affect racial policy making. I argue that traditional models of European policy making fail to explain the implementation of the anti-discrimination law, proposing instead a new focus on the relationship between ideas and institutions. This approach leads to the conclusion that the institution of citizenship is the variable that best explains variation among countries. In doing so, it also exposes the challenges faced by social movements attempting to use the EU to create social change, as well as the difficulties of addressing different systems of racial inequality with a law borrowed from another political and cultural setting. It concludes with an argument for the necessity of the recognition of the emerging academic field of European racial policy and its unique characteristics.