[Publication] The role of culture, education, media and sport in the fight against racism – Background analysis

Conclusion 1: The EU Anti-racism Action Plan 2020-2025 generally reflects the diversity of remedy measures proposed in literature

The EU Anti-racism Action Plan 2020-2025 is a suitable tool within the policy competences of the EU to combat racism in the fields of culture, education, media, and sports. Virtually all remedy measures identified in the literature are embedded in the Action plan.

Conclusion 2: There is limited steering within EU programmes on their contribution to the fight against racism, except for the Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values (CERV) programme

The Erasmus+, Creative Europe, and European Solidarity Corps programmes generally lack specific objectives related to the fight against racism and discrimination, and mostly cover these priorities as horizontal principles. The CERV programme takes a different approach and includes clear references to the EU Anti-racism Action Plan at all stages of the policy cycle. More specifically, the Creative Europe programme has little to no direct references to racism per se, but aims to foster diversity, intercultural dialogue, cultural heritage, inclusion, and community development under its remit. In addition, positive action to ensure representation of minorities is explicitly recalled in the Creative Europe programme’s objectives. No specific steering on discrimination and racism is foreseen in Erasmus+, except for actions related to sport where specific interventions exist that address racism as a priority. The implementation guidelines on the ‘Inclusion and Diversity Strategy’, which apply to the Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps, provide mechanisms to support inclusion and diversity within the programmes. Yet, they mostly consider discrimination as one of the barriers hampering accessibility and outreach, but they do not outline specific arrangements or incentives for actions that explicitly aim to combat discrimination.

Conclusion 3: There is a significant share of projects that address racism related topics, reflecting a diversity of remedy measures

The study shows that a substantial share of projects explicitly addressing racism-related topics have been implemented over the period 2014-2020 – except for the Creative Europe programme reporting lower figures -despite the limited steering on this specific topic at the programming level. Yet, if higher ambition in this field is needed, this can only go through more direct and explicit references to combatting racism in the regulatory frameworks and work programmes.

Conclusion 4: There is a lack of measuring of the programmes’ contribution to the fights against racism

Baseline information on how the EU programmes under review contribute to the fight against racism is missing. In the monitoring framework of Erasmus+ no specific indicators are defined to measure the programme’s contribution to the fight against racism, except for actions in the field of sport that had a dedicated specific objective related to intolerance, discrimination, and equal access to sport for all. Similar conclusions can be drawn for the European Solidarity Corps and Creative Europe programmes. Even where specific evaluation arrangements exist (i.e., the CERV programme and its Rights, Equality and Citizenship predecessor), information on results and effects seems limited. This is due to inherent difficulties in measuring and demonstrating effects in this area, but also to insufficient emphasis being placed on the monitoring and evaluation of the specific theme of racism.

Conclusion 5: There is a need for further building on existing good practices / incentives developed by programmes and implementing institutions

The actions carried out by implementing institutions that aim to fight racism are not systematically recorded and evaluated. In addition, the contribution of EU programmes and their related projects to the fight against racism is not systematically analysed within thematic and impact studies/ evaluations. This hampers the identification of good practices that could be further disseminated.