JSPES, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2002 )
p. 257-269

Race Legislation in the European Union

Frank Ellis

This article examines three pieces of European Union race legislation: The Joint Action (1996) which advocates a whole range of criminal offences based on racism; the European Union's Race Directive (2000) which imposes new legal burdens on whites while at the same time weakening the burden of proof for plaintiffs (mostly non-whites) in disputes involving race and ethnicity; and the proposal for a Council Framework Decision (CFD) to combat racism and xenophobia which was published in November 2001. The cumulative effect of this legislation, argues the author of this article, is to criminalise opposition to Europe's experiment with multiculturalism.