The European Parliament is expected to call on EU governments for progress on classifying hate speech and hate crime as EU crimes as there hasn't been any development on this since 2022.
In the draft report to be voted on this week, Parliament members highlight the need to ensure that all people and groups that can become targets of hate are protected, and to ensure that freedom of expression is not exploited to protect hate speech and hate crimes. They are also set to call for an “open-ended” approach where incidents would be assessed based on their circumstances.
So-called EU crimes are crimes of a particularly serious nature with a cross-border dimension, as set out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. Currently, EU countries laws deal with hate speech and hate crime in different ways, while EU-wide rules are limited in their scope to race, skin colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.