Data collection on racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and racial intolerance, and on measures to combat these

The primary task of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) is to provide the Community and its Member States with objective, reliable and comparable information and data on racism, xenophobia, islamophobia and anti-Semitism at the European level in order to help the EU and its Member States to establish measures or formulate courses actions against racism and xenophobia.

 

On the basis of the data collected, the EUMC studies the extent and development of the phenomena and manifestations of racism and xenophobia, and analyses their causes, consequences and effects. It is also the task of the EUMC to work out strategies to combat racism and xenophobia and to highlight and disseminate examples of good practice regarding the integration of migrants and ethnic and religious minority groups in the EU Member States.

 

The main normative basis for the work of the EUMC are: The Racial Equality Directive and the Employment Equality Directive: introduced by the European Community in 2000 has afforded EU citizens a common minimum level of protection against discrimination.

 

The legislation represents Europe's response to combating the threat that discrimination poses to the economic and social cohesion of the Union, and has its basis in Article 13 of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. This Article conferred to the European Community the powers to take measures to fight discrimination on grounds of sex, race/ethnic origin, religion/belief, disability, age and sexual orientation. In this context, the EUMC deals with race/ethnic origin as discrimination ground.

FRA webpage at: http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/products/publications_reports/publications_reports_en.htm.

 

Other sources of data: police statistics and other official data sources.

The EUMC has established the European Information Network on Racism and Xenophobia (RAXEN) to collect data and information in all of the EU Member States.

 

The RAXEN network is composed of 25 contracted consortia of organisations (research organisations, NGOs, special bodies, social partners, etc.) that function as the EUMC's National Focal Points (NFPs). They provide the EUMC with national level data on racism, discrimination and good practice.

 

For each of its comparative reports and analyses, the EUMC develops specific common guidelines along which the RAXEN NFPs collect data at the national level. The guidelines specify the type of data (qualitative and quantitative) and data sources that the NFPs are tasked to consider.