U.S. Summer of Discontent Sparks EU Anti-Racism Action Plan
Citizens face a “reality of ingrained racism” that can no longer be ignored, the European Commission said.
(Bloomberg) -- Global outrage over discrimination and police brutality in the U.S. is set to spill over into European Union policies as the bloc’s executive arm prepares to unveil its first ever anti-racism action plan.
Europeans face a “moment of reckoning” that can no longer be ignored, the European Commission said in the proposals published on Friday. The authority vowed to sue nations that don’t apply the bloc’s strict racism and xenophobia laws.
Protests sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement “sent a clear message -- change must happen now,” Vera Jourova, commission vice-president for values and transparency, said in a statement. Checking by next year whether existing EU laws are tough enough will be one priority.
The move in Europe comes as the U.S. is reeling over several highly-charged episodes in which police have killed Black Americans, prompting protests in multiple cities. The victims include George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by an officer in Minneapolis. The officer has been charged with murder. Tensions spread to the EU, where groups of campaigners toppled old statues glorifying slave traders.
In this week’s State of the Union speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pointed to developments in the U.S. before warning that the EU must now put its own house in order.
“When we look around, we ask ourselves, where is the essence of humanity when three children in Wisconsin watch their father shot by police while they sit in the car?” she said.
“We ask where is the essence of humanity when anti-semitic carnival costumes openly parade on our streets?” Von der Leyen said. “Where is the essence of humanity when every single day Roma people are excluded from society and others are held back simply because of the color of their skin or their religious belief?”
Jourova said on Friday that the EU is also weighing discussions with member nations about the possibility to broaden the scope of existing rules on hate crime.
Another priority set out in the plan is to create a reliable set of data to properly assess the scale and nature of discrimination across the EU. Compared to data on other grounds of discrimination, such as sex, disability and age, data on discrimination by ethnic or racial origin is scarce. This is partly due to the backlash in many nations after World War II against the keeping of such records.
Data Problems
“Obstacles include problems in establishing a common methodology, with some member states collecting such data while others consciously avoid this approach,” the EU document says. “As a result, many surveys focus on the perception of discrimination or use proxies such as citizenship or country of birth.”
The commission wants “a new approach on equality data collection” and will organize a roundtable to find ways toward a more harmonized collection of data.
“These are times when we have to curb our cynicism and we should really welcome this as a very important moment in which we have the EU executive acknowledging that racism is a problem in Europe,” said Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director for Europe at Human Rights Watch.
“Action plans in general, while they are never properly and fully implemented, send a message that this is an issue that we care about” and lay out a roadmap and specific benchmarks, Sunderland said.
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