Instances of racial violence and xenophobia are on the rise in Europe.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) came to this grave conclusion when it published its annual report for the year 2000. "The worrying thing is that not just racist violence, but also racial discrimination is growing rapidly all over Europe", said Beate Winkler, Director of the EUMC on Tuesday in the European Parliament in Brussels as the report was made public. Increasing racial violence, anti-Semitism and discrimination of people based on their skin colour and religion – the annual report makes note of this and points a finger in particular towards five EU heavyweights: Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden and Spain. In Germany, racist motivated crimes have soared by 33 percent as compared to last year. The news is worse for Great Britain – xenophobic acts there have doubled. But the EUMC report makes clear that racial discrimination is not confined to a handful of singled-out European countries. One of the reasons - the at times completely differing interpretations in countries of what amounts to a racist motivated crime. In many European countries, incidents of xenophobic attacks are seldom handled by the police as clear-cut racist crimes. That’s why one can’t automatically conclude that more racism exists in countries, which book a comparatively high number of xenophobic crimes. The country with the most shocking track record of racist violence according to the report is Spain, where unprecedented brutal attacks on foreigners took place last year. The EUMC report makes particular mention of the Spanish village of El Ejido, where Spanish villagers assaulted and hounded Moroccan emigrants through the streets for four days.There has already been a marked increase in racist attacks on Muslims after September 11 –both verbal as well as physical.