European Jewish leaders, backed by a host of former EU heads of state and governments, are to call this week for pan-European legislation outlawing antisemitism amid a sense of siege and emergency feeding talk of a mass exodus of Europe’s oldest ethnic minority.
A panel of four prestigious international experts on constitutional law have spent three years consulting widely and drafting a 12-page document on “tolerance” that they are lobbying to have converted into law in the 28 countries of the EU.
The proposal would outlaw antisemitism as well as criminalising a host of other activities deemed to be violating fundamental rights on specious religious, cultural, ethnic and gender grounds.
These would include banning the burqa, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, polygamy, denial of the Holocaust and genocide generally, criminalising xenophobia, and creating a new crime of “group libel” – public defamation of ethnic, cultural, or religious groups. Women’s and gay rights would also be covered.
The proposed legislation would also curb, in the wake of the Paris attacks, freedom of expression on grounds of tolerance and in the interests of security. » | Ian Traynor, Europe editor | Sunday, January 25, 2015
