Retour Launch of the No Hate Parliamentary Alliance

Strasbourg , 

For some time now, and across Europe, we have been seeing populism on the rise; xenophobia on the march; and a growing number of individuals and groups who wish to exploit people’s anxieties in order to peddle their hate.

Racism and intolerance are resilient creatures. They are evolving to survive. Instead of obvious, explicit attacks on particular groups, more and more we see something more subtle. In the media, in politics, in day-to-day life we see a kind of casual, everyday racism, which can be much harder to expose but which is dangerous all the same.

By joining together today we take a stand against this and against all forms of racism and intolerance. And we send a message to the people in our societies, showing them that their elected law-makers are striving for a better internet and a better society.

I commend you for your commitment and for having put in place this important and timely initiative. The No Hate Alliance will provide a strong and much needed political impetus to the work we have already been doing.

In particular, I want to mention our No Hate Speech campaign. In this framework, the Council of Europe has been partnering with youth organisations across Europe. There are now national campaigns in around 40 member States – looking to make the internet a space where we combat spreading, inciting, promoting or justifying racial hatred. But this cannot be done without the backing and support of public authorities and public figures.  The Parliamentary Alliance can provide that.

I hope that you will also support the important work of the ECRI, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. The ECRI works closely with other European organisations and civil society to help combat different forms of discrimination - including, of course, anti-Semitism, which will be the topic of this morning’s discussion. They are currently working on a new General Policy Recommendation on Hate Speech, which should be adopted by the end of this year and which will need our backing.

And, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, we have a number of new activities which I hope you will support. We know that terrorism begins with radicalisation. Well, radicalisation begins with learning to hate. It begins with stigma, insults, expressions of prejudice and the verbal humiliation of others. In other words, it begins with hate speech.

So our No Hate Speech campaign will not end in March, as planned. We will continue to work with young people across Europe to develop a counter-narrative to extremist propaganda, based on our shared values and human rights.

The Council of Europe will continue to prioritise tackling hate speech online – and we now want to bring together governments and internet companies to establish mechanisms for combatting hate speech on the internet while still defending freedom of expression.

We are putting education at the heart of our work. The Secretary General has called for a special meeting of Europe’s Education Ministers, for whom we will develop a set of competences on democratic citizenship. That will mean concrete criteria and competences for teaching young people about their rights and civic responsibilities, intercultural skills, including teaching about religions in the classroom.

You will be able to draw on all of this work and I very much look forward to us working together. Together we must publicly challenge, reject and condemn expressions of hatred, wherever we find them. Right now there are people across Europe who feel afraid, and this Alliance has the political power to make a meaningful difference in their lives. I wish you all the best in that endeavour, and I will be with you every step of the way.