Racial justice protests have spread from the United States to Europe, including this mid-June 2020 demo in Strasbourg, eastern France
The European Parliament voted Friday to declare that "Black Lives Matter" and to denounce racism and white supremacism in all its forms.
The resolution has no legal consequences but sends a signal of support to anti-racism protesters, and it follows a UN call for a probe into police brutality and "systemic racism."
And, one day before President Donald Trump is to hold a rally in Tulsa, a city that saw one of the worst racist massacres in US history, the lawmakers condemned American police brutality.
Point number one of the text of the resolution takes up the slogan US campaigners painted on the street leading to the White House, when it "Affirms that Black Lives Matter."
The resolution, passed by 493 votes to 104, "strongly condemns the appalling death of George Floyd", an unarmed suspect killed by US police in May.
It rebukes Trump for his "inflammatory rhetoric" and for threatening to deploy the army against protesters.
And EU member states themselves, many of which have seen protests in recent days about modern racism and previous colonial crimes, are not spared in the motion.
EU capitals are urged to denounce "the disproportionate use of force and racist tendencies in law enforcement."
The EU institutions and the member states should officially acknowledge past injustices and crimes against humanity committed against black people, people of colour and Roma.
And the resolution declares the slave trade a "crime against humanity."
Earlier Friday, the UN Human Rights Council demanded a report on "systemic racism", but left out any direct mention of the United States in the resolution.
ciaran036 on June 20th, 2020 at 08:32 UTC »
Nobody here seems to understand how the EU works. This could never have been anything more than a symbolic move. Equality laws are already part of EU legislation. The EU represents something like 27 separate countries, there's nothing concrete that could be easily applied to all member states.
This is positive symbolic move and that's the height of what could reasonably be expected.
MisterMysterios on June 20th, 2020 at 04:42 UTC »
The question is also pretty much what can they do. Racism related binding legilsation is outside the competences the EU has to legislate, because of that, they can only do non binding declaration. The issues the EU has legislation over has provisions against racism for quite some time. The economical equality laws all over the EU are based on an EU directive. But beyond that, especially in regards of policing, are solely legilsation on national level.
autotldr on June 20th, 2020 at 02:00 UTC »
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: resolution#1 against#2 racism#3 Crime#4 states#5