The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) will examine, on Monday 4 September, a draft report calling on the Council of the EU to include hate crimes and hate speech in the list of European crimes.
Drawn up by María Pagazaurtundúa (Renew Europe, Spanish), the report “strongly regrets” the lack of progress over the last 2 years and calls on the Member States to “work together responsibly and constructively to resume negotiations [...] in order to adopt a Council decision before the end of the current parliamentary term”, also pointing out that “successful negotiations require concessions”.
Blockage at the EU Council
At the end of 2021, the European Commission published a communication calling on the Council of the EU to include hate crimes and hate speech in Article 83 of the TFEU, which lists the Union’s offences (see EUROPE 12850/16). But despite a plan put forward by the French Presidency of the EU Council for a conclusion in March 2022, several countries continue to oppose it.
However, extending the list of “Eurocrimes” requires the agreement of all of the 27 Member States. In her text, Ms Pagazaurtundúa therefore suggests activating the ‘passerelle’ clause, which would allow the unanimous vote to be replaced by a qualified majority vote in the EU Council.
In April, the European Parliament already called for this clause to be activated in order to break the deadlock in negotiations on the horizontal ‘anti-discrimination’ directive... a solution which, according to the Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, would not gain the support of the Member States (see EUROPE 13165/6).
Covering all grounds of discrimination
In addition to “making a strong political call to the Council”, the report aims to bring “recommendations to the Commission for the drafting of the future European legislation to combat hate speech and hate crime”.
The rapporteur points out that the current European framework only covers hate speech and hate crimes based on origin and religion, and not those based on gender, age, sexual orientation or disability. She urges the Commission to “consider an open-ended approach whereby the list of grounds of discrimination will not be limited”.
At the same time, she calls on the institution to “take additional measures in countering the dissemination of illegal hate speech in online content”.
The text also stresses the need for a balanced approach between preserving freedom of expression and ensuring that this freedom is not “to be exploited as a shield” for hate speech and hate crimes.
Lastly, the rapporteur calls for special attention to be paid to minors and recommends that adequate data collection systems be established on the extent of the phenomenon within the EU.
The draft report will be supplemented by an opinion from the Committee on Gender Equality (FEMM), which will be put to the vote in October (see EUROPE 13209/31).
To see the draft report: https://aeur.eu/f/8ck (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)