UK must lead, not hobble, EU-wide fight against racist violence

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 14th Apr 2005

Commenting on the publication by the EU Racism Monitoring Centre of a comparative study of racist violence in the EU, London MEP and Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman Baroness Sarah Ludford, vice-Chair of the European Parliament Anti-Racism and Diversity 'Intergroup' said:

"This report emphasises the need to agree quickly the proposed EU law making racial harassment a criminal and therefore recordable offence throughout the EU."

"It is discouraging to hear that the UK is dragging its heels on this, when in fact we can lead in forging a vigorous EU effort to protect ethnic minority citizens and residents."

"The UK is in the forefront in Europe in dealing with race attacks. We are far ahead in the collection of data, a racial motive can be an aggravating factor in sentencing, and race hate crimes are severely punished."

"The report highlights the woefully inadequate official recording of racial attacks across most of Europe, which hobbles effective action and means many victims suffer in silence. The UK's efficient data collection system and criminal justice response means we look  - wrongly - as if we have the worst problem, but some countries hide their problem by not collecting any facts at all."

"It's offensively ironic that EU Member States are gung-ho about surveilling, profiling and gathering biometric data on us in the name of security, but seem unable to compile comprehensive data on violent incidents affecting the personal security of their citizens and residents."

Ends

Notes

Notes:

1.  The EU Monitoring Centre on Racism is a Vienna-based agency of the EU. The full report and a summary with main findings can be downloaded at: www.eumc.eu.int.

2.  The report's findings show that Greece, Italy and Portugal have no public official criminal justice data on racial crime; Luxembourg and Spain have limited data collection; Austria, Germany and Denmark focus their data collection procedures on the activities of extremist groups; Finland, France, Ireland and the UK have the most comprehensive data collection mechanisms in place that can reveal much about the extent and nature of racist violence.