On Monday 26 June, the European Parliament’s Committee on Gender Equality (FEMM) examined a draft opinion calling on the EU Council to include hate crimes and hate speech in the list of EU offences. This is an issue that has been blocked for over a year due to a lack of unanimity (see EUROPE 12902/24).
However, several Member States have only reluctantly agreed to texts such as the future directive to combat violence against women, believing that the appropriate legal basis for criminalising cyber-violence would have been to include hate speech in Article 83 of the TFEU beforehand (see EUROPE 13198/1, 13194/22). According to several sources, an agreement to extend this list seems unlikely in the immediate future (see EUROPE 13173/1).
Lead by Vera Tax (S&D, Dutch), the opinion calls on the Member States to overcome the impasse. It also encourages the European Commission to “include an explicit definition of gender-based hate speech and hate crime when legislation is proposed”.
Finally, the report stresses the need to understand the origins of hatred towards women, with a particular focus on the strategies and funding of “anti-gender movements”.
The draft opinion will be put to the vote by the FEMM Committee in October. The final report, currently being drafted, will be proposed by María Pagazaurtundúa (Renew Europe, Spanish) for the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE).
The text: https://aeur.eu/f/7qm (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)