CoE anti-racism commission reviews progress on key recommendations in Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, and Monaco

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) published today its conclusions on implementing its priority recommendations for Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, and Monaco over the past few years.

Anti-racism commission reviews

Cyprus

ECRI recommended to Cyprus that a national LGBTI strategy be prepared, accompanied by a national action plan, with a sufficient separate budget for its implementation. While it is positive that the Cypriot authorities have demonstrated a willingness to work on such a strategy, it has not been issued yet, and thus, this recommendation has not been implemented.

ECRI’s second priority recommendation was to take immediate action to support child asylum seekers and other migrant children in acquiring the Greek language skills necessary to allow them to follow ordinary primary school classes taught in Greek and to conduct individual skills assessments. ECRI welcomes the prompt action taken and concludes that the recommendation has been implemented.

Denmark

Denmark was requested by ECRI to implement two priority recommendations. Firstly, ECRI recommended that the Danish authorities introduce a national action plan against racism, with a particular emphasis on preventing anti-Muslim racism and discrimination and including steps towards securing a proportion of staff from Muslim and other minority backgrounds in such professions as law enforcement officials and teachers. While welcoming the preparations for such an action plan, including the budget allocation, ECRI concludes that the document has not been adopted yet and, therefore, the recommendation has not been implemented.

Secondly, the Council of Europe body recommended that the Danish authorities should introduce positive incentives for all to avoid forced evictions to achieve the objectives of the so-called “parallel society” legislation as regards a more balanced composition between “non-westerners”, EU citizens and “native Danes” in the neighbourhoods concerned. While the Danish authorities’ position is that no eviction of tenants takes place based on their ethnic or national origin from non-Western countries, ECRI nevertheless notes that the aim of the Danish legislation and related policy remains to reduce the share of “non-westerners” in “parallel societies” and “transformation areas” (formerly called “ghetto areas” and “hard ghetto areas” respectively) and that the implementation of the policy has inevitably resulted in forced evictions, decisions on which are being challenged in Danish courts. ECRI concludes that this recommendation has not been implemented.

Estonia

In its most recent report on Estonia, ECRI recommended that the authorities take urgent steps to amend the Penal Code with a view to ensuring that anyone, be it groups of individuals, engaged in hate speech of a criminal nature is duly prosecuted and punished and that citizenship and gender identity be included among the prohibited grounds. ECRI welcomes action initiated by the Estonian authorities to amend the Penal Code, but notes with regret that the government did not propose to insert explicitly citizenship and gender identity among the prohibited grounds and has not yet been able to move forward in parliament after the first reading. The Commission concludes that this recommendation has only been partially implemented so far.

The other priority recommendation was to organise a broad consultation of teachers working with pupils and students with Russian and other non-Estonian backgrounds, as well as parents’ associations and community organisations, to implement the new strategies related to education in Estonia effectively. ECRI acknowledges that the transition to Estonian-language education is a very sensitive topic and welcomes the action taken, but it recalls that consultations should be regular and dissenting voices should be taken into consideration as far as possible. This recommendation has been implemented, ECRI says.