Better records essential for keeping track of racist crimes in EU

Date: 30/04/03

AN ANTI-RACIST organisation has criticized the failure of some member states to keep records of racial attacks.

Only eight of the 15 states - Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the UK - have kept official records of such crimes, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) reports.

Of those countries which do keep records, the figures may "under-reflect" true levels of crime, fears the centre's director, Beate Winkler.

Speaking at a public hearing at the European Parliament on 24 April, Winkler said: "For the majority of the 15 states, it is not possible to talk about trends based on the numbers of racist violent acts.

"But the many reports that EUMC has received on racist violence from all member states over the last year shows a quite extensive, widespread and far-reaching racist crime level in the EU. Judging from human rightsorganisations, no country in the Union is immune."

She urged member states to recognize the "importance of collecting and publishing accurate data on the number and nature of racist and xenophobic incidents, the number of cases prosecuted and the outcome of prosecutions".

In three of the eight member states that keep records - Germany, Sweden and the UK - the number of recorded racial crimes was ten times higher than in the other five. Top of the 'league table' is the UK with 53,312 recorded racial crimes last year, followed by Germany with 15,000, and Sweden with 2,500.

A key trend in the past three years, said Winkler, was racial violence directed towards immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) has criticised the failure of some Member States to keep records of racial attacks.