ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the Second World War, European countries ratified a range of legislation recognising racist and religious discrimination, and racist and xenophobic crime. These legal responses variously reflect historical developments in individual countries, and can be characterised broadly under three main headings:1 (1) legislation that sets out to combat National Socialist/ fascist/neo-Nazi ideologies, which is particularly important in countries that have suffered under dictatorships; (2) anti-discrimination legislation, which has its origins in the United Nations 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD); and (3) ‘hate crime’ legislation, which currently exists in some form in many member states, but which is not as wide-ranging as ‘hate crime’ legislation in the US. In the area of racist and religiously motivated crimes, many European countries can be characterised as embracing a hybrid legal response that incorporates elements of the above approaches.
