Racism and xenophobia are widespread in Europe and member states need to take immediate action to fight antisemitism, according to a human rights agency.

As support for xenophobic and anti-migrant agendas grows, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) is calling for better data collection and more effective access to justice for victims.

The persistent lack of information was central to the agency’s annual overview of antisemitism in the EU, it said yesterday, following the publication of a report that includes all available data on antisemitic incidents between 2004 and 2014. Malta is one of the seven member states that does not feature in the report, issued on the eve of the European Commission’s first Annual Colloquium on Fundamental Rights, as no official, or unofficial, data was available.

One of the organisations that FRA consulted was the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Only nine states provided this international office with data in 2013, with Germany reporting 1,275 antisemitic hate crimes followed by 450 in France.

“The attacks we have seen this year in France, Denmark and elsewhere in the EU are part of a climate of intolerance that we must fight with all the means at our disposal,” FRA’s interim director Constantinos Manolopoulos said yesterday.

“There are many positive initiatives around the EU, but in the current situation this is not enough. The EU needs to take immediate and decisive action to combat extremist, xenophobic and antisemitic discourse and crimes.”

Victims and witnesses need to be encouraged to report such incidents, but the authorities must also have systems in place to record them.

A working group on combating hate crime set up by FRA last year is cooperating with all states to improve recording and encourage reporting of hate crime.