Reassessing Compliance: Discrepancies in Application of EU Law

Abstract

While the European Union (EU) finds itself in the midst of a protracted financial crisis, the persistence of racially and ethnically motivated violence constitutes an additional setback for the region. It is a sobering reminder that threats from racism and discrimination are more than relics of a distant past. The violent attacks on immigrants in Greece in May 2011,¹ a brutal beating of a graduate student of African descent in Ireland in November 2011,² racially motivated shootings in Italy and Belgium in December 2011,³ and Germany’s shocking discovery of a multi-year string of neo-Nazi murders (Crossland 2011), all present an alarming pattern of racially motivated violence in Europe. Given that the last half-century’s experiment in integration has been premised in part on the free movement of peoples, recent challenges to multiculturalism merit systematic attention. As economic austerity measures make groups at society’s margins ever more vulnerable, questions must by necessity be asked about responses from public officials at all levels. There is, indeed, mounting agreement that the EU cannot ignore the issue of discrimination or miscalculate the danger that this poses for its unity and long-term political and economic prosperity.