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Racism and Xenophobia in the EU Member States. Trends, developments and good practice. Annual Report 2005 – Media Summary

Document number
1925
Date
2005
Title
Racism and Xenophobia in the EU Member States. Trends, developments and good practice. Annual Report 2005 – Media Summary
Author/publisher
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Media/News,
Keywords
Council Directive 2000/43/EC (the ‘Race’ Directive) and Council Directive 2000/78/EC (the Employment Directive)
Summary
The Annual Report 2005 covers developments for the year 2004 concerning the occurrence of, and responses to, racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and anti- Muslim manifestations in the 25 EU Member States. This year’s Annual Report presents an overview in the five research areas - legislation, employment, housing, education, and racist violence and crimes. Selected examples of ‘good practice’ initiatives, from both the EU15 and the new Member States, are inserted throughout the report. It is apparent that some Member States are relatively active in initiatives against racism and discrimination, while others lag behind. The enlargement of the EU poses new challenges in the area of data collection, including with respect to groups such as the Roma that are particularly vulnerable to racism. The EU’s anti-discrimination Directives should help to break the vicious circle of deprivation, prejudice and discrimination that they experience. A number of incidents took place in 2004 that had repercussions on intercommunity relations across Europe, most notably, the Madrid train bombings (March 2004) and the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands (November 2004). One theme running through this EUMC report is the problem of the absence of adequate data on which to evaluate problems and base policies. The true extent and nature of the problem of racist violence and crime remains difficult to gauge given the continued absence or ineffectiveness of both official and unofficial data collection in many Member States
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