UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 20 APRIL 2021
Dr Piotr Godzisz from BCU’s Centre for Security and Extremism provided evidence on the criminalisation of hate speech during the consultations organised by the European Commission.
Following last year’s announcement by its President, Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission is looking into extending the list of EU crimes to cover hate speech and hate crime.
The consultation, which concluded on 16 April 2021, targeted experts with knowledge of the criminalisation of hate speech and hate crime.
“The European Commission aimed to collect views on the existing national legal frameworks and the nature of hate speech and hate crime across Europe,” said Dr Godzisz, who responded to the call for evidence.
“The Commission wants to know if hate speech and hate crime are serious enough crimes which have a cross-border dimension. If yes, this would justify their inclusion in the list of the so-called “EU crimes,” such as terrorism, human trafficking, corruption or money laundering.”
Experts were asked to provide evidence pertaining to individual member states or aggregated at European level.
“I decided to focus my submission on Poland, one of a handful EU member states that doesn’t recognise hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability in the law,” explained Dr Godzisz.
“Racist and xenophobic crimes are addressed by criminal laws almost everywhere in Europe. But, even though we have tons of evidence showing the scale and the destructive nature of homophobic or disablist hate crime, some states, like Poland, still fail to protect vulnerable communities.”
The EU consultation follows up from the plans announced last year by the Commission President. In September 2020, President von der Leyen announced her intention to build “a union of equality.”
“Adding hate crimes and hate speech, whether those committed because of race, religion, gender or sexuality – to the list of “EU crimes” is now part of the official EU working plans, described in the EU Gender Equality Strategy and the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy,” explained Dr Godzisz.
Both documents refer to hate crimes and hate speech based on gender, and gender identity and sexual orientation, respectively.
BCU submission was based on the ongoing research on hate crime laws and policies in Europe conducted by Dr Godzisz, who is often called upon by international bodies and civil society organisations to conduct research, training and consultancy services.
The Centre for Security and Extremism brings together academic expertise from both staff and postgraduates working in the broad area of security studies and specifically issues related to hate crimes, Islamophobia, online and offline hate crimes and political and human (in) security.