EU launches online anti-Semitism survey in nine countries

BRUSSELS (JTA) — The European Union launched an online survey into how Jews experience anti-Semitism in nine member states.

Results will be published in an EU report next year, Henry Nickels of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency said Tuesday at a European Jewish Parliament conference in Brussels.

Nickels’ Vienna-based intergovernmental body and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, an independent organization from London, commissioned the British market research company Ipsos MORI to conduct the survey.

The study “investigates firsthand examples of anti-Semitic harassment and violence as well as the extent to which Jews feel safe in Europe,” a statement by the institute said.

To participate, respondents must be older than 16 and residing in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Sweden or the United Kingdom.

“This type of robust evidence will assist EU institutions in taking measures that will ensure that the rights of the Jewish people are fully protected,” Ioannis Dimitrakopoulus of the Fundamental Rights Agency said.

Joel Rubinfeld, the European Jewish Parliament’s co-chair, told JTA that the situation in Hungary is particularly worrisome “because we are seeing signs that official institutions there are condoning anti-Semitism.”

Laszlo Banay, chief adviser for the Budapest municipality and an EJP member, said at the conference that the right-wing Hungarian political party Jobbik has two Internet home pages: “One official page, and another unofficial and openly anti-Semitic one which operates from the US.”

Hungarian authorities are not prosecuting the website’s operators for hate speech, he said, even thought their identities are known.