“The European Union will set out a comprehensive strategy to combat antisemitism this year as part of a €1.5 billion programme to support fundamental rights across the bloc”, European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas announced.
The plan was confirmed by Schinas, the European Commission vice-president responsible for ‘promoting the European way of life’ at the opening of a High-Level Conference on Protection against Racial Discrimination and Related Intolerance, organised by the Portuguese EU presidency.
The strategy “will provide a comprehensive framework to complement and support member states’ effort on preventing and combating antisemitism, educating on the Holocaust remembrance and fostering Jewish life in Europe,” said Schinas.
The question of tackling anti-Semitism and other racist behaviour has risen up the EU’s agenda in the wake of a spike in racism prompted by the COVID pandemic. Last December, EU leaders signed a declaration urging European governments to impose harsher punishments for online hate crimes and anti-Semitism.
The pandemic had created “fertile ground for the escalation of xenophobic and antisemitic practices and discourses,” Francisco André, Portugal’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, said at the conference.
A recent Eurobarometer found that 36% of the general public think that anti-Semitism is increasing, while an FRA survey of Jews revealed that almost 90% of Jewish respondents have this view.
Prior to the pandemic, the latest report by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, published last September, counted more than 3,000 antisemitic incidents across the bloc in 2019.
