The RED (Rights Equality and Diversity) Annual Report for Europe 2011 sounds the alarm for Greece who seems to be , along with Spain, the most acute example of racist violence cases.
The bigger increase in crime cases against immigrants in Greece and Spain is partly attributed to the fact that “these countries present the highest unemployment rates among young people,” explains Miltos Pavlou in the findings of the report.
The report findings underline the inconsistency between the political correctness of the EU and the previous European legislation for the protection of minorities’ rights on one hand, and the rise of xenophobic rhetoric and racist violence in the Member States on the other.
“The EU seems to be cut out from national governments,” Miltos Pavlou, RED Network Coordinator, points out. In almost all EU countries of the RED Network, problems concerning the implementation of national legislation prohibiting discrimination and combating racist and hate crime are reported. The situation is deteriorating even in countries which didn’t exhibit such problems in the past,” he added. A special emphasis is put on the Roma children being segregated in education in most EU countries and immigrants.
Crisis seems to affect migrants significantly; unemployment among migrants has exceeded the unemployment rate of general workforce for the first time in 2009. In addition, migrants receive lower wages than native Greeks and they are excluded from public sector, since employment in the latter is limited to Greeks and EU nationals.
The RED Network started in 2010 and was co-founded by the EU in 2011. It is a design initiated by the Greek Institute for Rights Equality & Diversity (i-RED) and co-developed by 17 research partners in 17 Member States. It records racism and discrimination cases, so as to describe the situation in every Member State. The Network aims at timely detecting racism, xenophobia and intolerance tendencies in Europe and combating them effectively by creating an early-warning system on racism, discrimination, situation in the EU Member States as well as on law and policies against discrimination racist violence, hate speech and stereotypes.
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