On Thursday 10 July, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published its contribution to the EU’s next Anti-racism Strategy for the period 2026–2030. This report, sent to the European Commission, will enable the future strategy to be drawn up on the basis of data that is quantifiable, reliable and up-to-date.
The FRA’s survey evidence, research findings and analyses have led it to draw up a summary of structural and systemic racism and racial inequality in the European Union.
As a result, and despite the legal frameworks designed to counter them, people of African, Muslim, Roma, Jewish or immigrant origin continue to experience discrimination on a daily basis, particularly with regard to accessing employment, housing, healthcare, education and justice.
The results of the third edition of the European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey, EU-MIDIS III, carried out by the FRA in 2022, show that 50% of respondents said they had been discriminated against in the last five years, which is twice as many as in the general population.
Among Muslims or people of African descent, these proportions rise to almost 60%.
In terms of housing, more than 45% of people of Syrian or Turkish origin claim to have been discriminated against, while in terms of employment, a third of people of African origin with tertiary qualifications are in an under-qualified job.
The FRA also addresses racist violence and harassment, intersectional discrimination, inequality or discrimination as the result of automated systems (algorithmic bias), ethnic profiling by law enforcement agencies, online hate speech, and issues faced by anti-racist civil society organisations.
The Agency therefore recommends a series of measures: strengthening sanctions against discrimination, implementing positive discrimination policies, generalising national action plans against racism, improving the collection of disaggregated data, taking fundamental rights into account in the monitoring and evaluation of public policies, etc.
On Tuesday 15 July, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs is organising a hearing bringing together the European Commission, the FRA, the European Anti-Discrimination Network (Equinet) and civil society stakeholders to take stock of the EU Anti-racism Action Plan (2020–2025) (https://aeur.eu/f/hve ), in order to prepare the next strategy as effectively as possible.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/hvg (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)