During its meeting, ECRI held an exchange of views on racism in policing with Alan Mitchell, President of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), Fabien Jobard, senior researcher specialised in policing and security matters at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales (CESDIP) (Paris, France) and Dezideriu Gergely, Council of Europe trainer on policing and non-discrimination issues and senior adviser at the National Council for Combating Discrimination (Bucharest, Romania).

Following its Roadmap to Effective Equality, ECRI adopted its General Policy Recommendation No. 5 (revised) on preventing and combating anti-Muslim racism and discrimination, which is expected to be published by March 2022. It also established a working group to draw up a new ECRI General Policy Recommendation on LGBTI issues.

After a series of discussions in ECRI and recent consultations with various stakeholders about the concept of “racialisation”, ECRI decided to adopt and publish an Opinion on the matter. The full text of the Opinion is available here.

As part of its sixth country monitoring cycle, ECRI examined its preliminary draft reports on Denmark, Estonia and Monaco. Finally, with regard to its fifth country monitoring cycle, ECRI completed the interim follow-up process by adopting conclusions on the implementation of priority recommendations addressed to Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovenia.

In the context of Bureau elections, ECRI re-elected Maria Daniella Marouda (member in respect of Greece) as its Chair for another two years and elected Reetta Toivanen (member in respect of Finland) as 1st Vice-Chair and Tena Šimonović Einwalter (member in respect of Croatia) as 2nd Vice-Chair for one year. Michael Farrell (member in respect of Ireland), Domenica Ghidei Biidu (member in respect of the Netherlands) and Irena Ilieva (member in respect of Bulgaria) were elected as Bureau members for two years.

During the meeting, ECRI took note of the statements made by observers, namely Momodou Malcolm Jallow, General Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on combating racism and intolerance, and Harald Bergmann, Spokesperson on Human Rights for the Congress of Regional and Local Authorities of the Council of Europe.

Maria Daniella Marouda, Chair of ECRI, and Alan Mitchell, President of the CPT, during ECRI’s exchange of views on racism in policing.

Members of ECRI attending their 87^th plenary meeting in Strasbourg.