Informal COSI: CEPOL highlights its contribution to combat hate crime

CEPOL Executive Director, Ms Montserrat Marín López participated at the Informal meeting of the Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI), organised in Aranjuez on 6-7 July 2023, under the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU.

During the discussion topic on law enforcement work to combat hate speech and hate crime, Ms. Marín López had the opportunity to present CEPOL’s contribution and highlight the value of training as a pivotal element of success in the fight against this crime:

Hate is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach at EU-level. We must act in a forward-looking manner to come up in real time with high-quality training opportunities for EU law enforcement officials. CEPOL is committed to offer training that ensures an effective and fundamental-rights-compliant law enforcement response against this crime that threatens our fundamental freedoms.

She also explained how the new CEPOL Strategy 2023-2027 not only aims to deliver a training offer adapted to the needs identified, but also to contribute to the generation and broad transfer of knowledge through the incorporation of scientifically effective learning methodologies.

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CEPOL’s concrete actions in the field of protecting fundamental rights and combatting hate crime

The latest EU Strategic Training Needs Assessment (EU-STNA) 2022-2025 identified fundamental rights and data protection as core capability gaps to be addressed as horizontal topics in all training activities in the EU. Towards this goal, CEPOL cooperates closely with key EU bodies, international organisations and other relevant stakeholders, such us the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Commission, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) and the European Lesbian and Gay Police Association (EGPA).

Furthermore, CEPOL is a member of the EU High Level Group on Hate Crime and Hate Speech, and since 2021 has been co-chairing the Working Group on Hate Crime Training and Capacity Building for National Law Enforcement, together with the European Commission, which has produced guidelines for streamlining Hate Crime training for law enforcement in the Member States.

To accelerate its efforts in the field of fundamental rights, CEPOL set up in 2021 a dedicated expert group with the mandate to develop a more structured and strategic approach to fundamental rights’ training for law enforcement officials.

In cooperation with its partners and experts in the field, CEPOL delivers training activities on topics related to fundamental rights, including addressing hate crime and hate speech. Its current training portfolio encompasses a variety of learning opportunities for EU law enforcement, both onsite and online.  CEPOL’s aim is to cover different aspects of the phenomenon, such as legislation, the impact of social media and digital networks on hate crime and hate speech; bias indicators for hate crime; cooperation with civil society for victim support; technological means to confront online hate speech and last but not least, the prevention of hate crime.

Registered users of CEPOL’s Law Enforcement Education Platform, LEEd, have access to a number of self-paced training activities, such as the CEPOL online module on hate crime, the eLesson on anti-Muslim hatred, recorded webinars, i.e. How to improve the fight against hate crimes from an institutional level, Improving hate crime recording and understanding bias indicators, Addressing hate crime against Roma and travellers, Hate crime against members of the LGBTQ community, etc.

An overview of this year’s activities is available in the CEPOL Training Catalogue 2023.