27
November
2012

Hate crime in the European Union

Despite EU Member States’ efforts to combat discrimination and intolerance, including hate crime, there are indications that the situation is not improving. Continued and renewed violations of the fundamental rights of people living within the EU have instead been witnessed over the past few years, through verbal abuse, physical attacks or even murders motivated by prejudice.

This factsheet highlights the policy context, key issues and ways forward related to two FRA reports on hate crime that together provide a comparative analysis of the existing legal framework, individual experiences of crime with a bias motivation and the state of official data collection throughout the 27 EU Member States.

Making hate crime visible in the European Union: acknowledging victims’ rights highlights the fundamental rights aspects of hate crime, offers a comparative analysis of official data collection mechanisms and considers how the scope of official data collection can be broadened. EU-MIDIS Data in Focus 6: Minorities as victims of crime presents data on respondents’ experiences of victimisation across five crime types, from burglary to serious harassment.