11 Spring-Summer 2017 Program that aims to establish higher common standards for European police officers and prosecutors who investigate hate crime, including antisemitism. The program was constructed during 2016 as an offering to police forces and prosecution agencies within the 20172019 Work Program.25 Although the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has published its authoritative annual report on antisemitism since 2005, it was the FRA Survey on “Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perception of antisemitism” that may finally have persuaded governments that their understanding of antisemitism, if they had any, was inaccurate or outdated. Large scale polling of Jews in eight EU member states demonstrated that Jews are unwilling to report antisemitic incidents because they believed that criminal justice agencies were unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute the perpetrators, and that consequently, substantial numbers in the worst affected states were contemplating emigration.26 Dispiritingly, the latest annual report, published in November 2016, notes that twelve years “after the first report on the manifestation of antisemitism in the EU, there is little progress to report with regard to data collection on antisemitism in the EU.”27 However, the Survey is to be repeated and in March 2017, FRA hosted a stakeholders and academics meeting to set the research parameters for the second Survey to be conducted during 2018.28 At the wider European level, and following consultation with a small group of European experts, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, in October 2016, issued a public statement warning against Holocaust denial, minimization and trivialization. In it, he noted that denial and associated activities were on the rise, and that despite strong international and European sanctions, states were failing to prosecute such crimes. He further noted that their own populations had played an active role in the persecution and mass murder of Jews and that some states were attempting to relativize the crimes committed by their own collaborationist wartime regimes. In doing so, he noted that remembrance lies at the heart of the Council of Europe, which existed to remember the crimes of the Nazi era. Member states ignored the evidence of rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial at their peril. European states should encourage Internet media providers and social media to take action to prevent and combat hate speech, accede to the 2003 Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime and recall that they are bound to sanction racist hatred and violence under the terms of Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination, and are required by the 2008 EU Framework Decision to criminalize Holocaust denial.29 The final initiative worth recording is that of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a human rights agency of the Council of Europe. The Commission advises member states in matters relating to combating racism, xenophobia and antisemitism by 24. European Commission, Overview of resources and initiatives to support hate crime training programs in the EU Member States, Feb. 2017, available at http://www.google.co.uk/ur l?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUK Ewjm8OqwyP7SAhXKJMAKHZKyDsQQFggaMAA&url= http%3A%2F%2Fec.europa.eu%2Fnewsroom%2Fdocument. cfm%3Fdoc_id%3D43147&usg=AFQjCNG49CC6Ymk7RS 4 LpD6mV- g 6XMAHmQ&s i g 2 =uPGdP r C J IUE - rEj9MPzrPQ&bvm=bv.151325232,d.d24 (last visited April 20, 2017). 25. CEPOL – Single Programming Document: Years 2017-2019, at 2427, European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training, Nov. 2015, available at https://www.cepol.europa. eu/sites/default/files/31-2015-GB.pdf (last visited April 20, 2017). It should also be noted that the author is part of a small team creating the training programs. 26 Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perceptions of antisemitism, FRA, 2013, available at http://fra.europa.eu/en/ publication/2013/discrimination-and-hate-crime-againstjews-eu-member-states-experiences-and (last visited May 8, 2017). 27. Antisemitism – Overview of data available in the European Union 2005-2015, FRA-European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, at 5, Nov. 2016, available at http:// fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2016antisemitism-update-2005-2015_en.pdf (last visited April 20, 2017). 28. Stakeholders discuss FRA’s second antisemitism survey, FRA, March 2017, available at http://fra.europa.eu/en/ event/2017/stakeholders-discuss-fras-second-antisemitismsurvey (last visited April 20, 2017). 29. Nils Muižnieks, Why remembering the Holocaust is a human rights imperative, Council of Europe, Oct. 18, 2016, available at http://www.coe.int/de/web/commissioner/ blog/-/asset_publisher/xZ32OPEoxOkq/content/whyremembering-the-holocaust-is-a-human-rights-imperative/ pop _ up ? _ 1 0 1 _ INSTANCE _ xZ3 2OPEo xOk q _ languageId=en_GB (last visited April 20, 2017).
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