In many EU member states, racist attacks and hate speech against migrants or ethnic minorities with a migration background are a daily reality. National migration and asylum policies lead to further exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination against third country nationals.
Nicoletta Charalambidou is Vice-Chair of the European Network Against Racism.
In Greece, 143 incidents of racist violence against migrants or refugees were recorded in 2013 by the Racist Violence Recording Network. This situation calls for concrete policies and measures by EU institutions that will effectively address the situation on the ground.
This will not be an easy task. The European Parliament now includes a number of MEPs using and supporting an outright xenophobic narrative against third country nationals. The Commissioner-designate for Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, has been pushed by the Greek government to get this portfolio to ensure that it can to impose its vision of migration on the rest of Europe. Yet Greece has been condemned repeatedly by the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights for systemic failures in abiding with its obligations under EU and international law as regards asylum seekers, refugee protection and respect for human rights.
In this context, the new European Parliament and the new Commissioners must acknowledge the following:
- The EU is currently faced with a serious problem regarding the rise of racism, xenophobia and discrimination against third country nationals and racist discourses targeting this particular group.
- Increasingly stringent external border controls, asylum and migration policies - with the economic crisis also used as an excuse - can only fuel racist and xenophobic discourses against third country nationals and policies that socially exclude and further marginalise them.
- The EU must reposition itself and take immediate measures to apply the principles upon which it was initially founded, i.e. democracy, the rule of law, respect of fundamental rights and equality, when dealing with migration and asylum
