EU Anti-Racism Strategy 2026-2030: A Toothless Strategy?
In January 2026, the European Commission published its long-awaited EU Anti-Racism Strategy 2026-2030, presented as a continuation of the 2020-2025 National Action Plan Against Racism (NAPAR). The original Action Plan marked a turning point: it acknowledged structural racism, appointed the EU’s first Anti-Racism Coordinator, and encouraged all 27 Member States to adopt their own National Action Plans Against Racism (NAPAR). As of early 2026, only 14 out of 27 have done so. Against the backdrop of rising far-right politics, shrinking civic space, and the normalization of racist narratives across Europe, expectations for the new strategy were high. Instead, many civil society organizations, including us, see the new strategy as a step back (see also the joint statement with #DiasporaVote!).
From Action Plan to Strategy
Despite its name, the new ‘Strategy’ lacks the political courage and enforcement mechanism required to confront systemic racism. Several critical elements present in the previous action plans have been watered down. Mentions of racialized youth and civic participation have almost disappeared from the document. Youth dialogues and youth-led participation for political engagement are absent, even though BIPOC youth continue to be among the most affected by discrimination in education, employment, and policing. This is particularly concerning given that less than 1% of Eramus+ projects currently focus on anti-racism. Similarly, civic engagement is no longer treated as central.
As of January 2026, only 5% of Members of the European parliament identify as racialized persons. No Roma MEP was elected in the current mandate, and there is only one MEP of Asian heritage. Yet the strategy fails to address these systematic gaps in representation. While the Strategy highlights intersectionality in its language, it offers no concrete mechanisms to ensure that people facing intersecting forms of discrimination are meaningfully included in policy design, monitoring and evaluation.
Front cover of the European Commission’s “EU Anti-Racism Strategy 2026-2030”
Anti-Asian racism: invisible and peripheral rather than structural
Anti-Asian racism remains tokenized in the new policy, without any concrete actions or institutional accountability to address it. Anti-Asian racism is briefly acknowledged in the introduction, but the strategy offers no targeted actions, no dedicated monitoring, and no institutional responsibility assigned at EU or Member State levels. This absence is not neutral. Issues affecting Asian communities were addressed under the broad anti-racism framework (2020-2025). While the Anti-Racism Coordinator’s portfolio covered all racialised groups, the area of anti-Asian racism did not receive the same focused attention that other communities did, for example with dedicated Coordinators.
There is still no single disaggregated EU-wide data on anti-Asian racism, even after 5 years of the Action Plan that actively included Asian diasporas in the context of the European Union. As a result, the strategy fails to recognize anti-Asian racism as a systemic issue requiring sustained institutional response. Asian communities remain structurally invisible: named symbolically, but excluded materially.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism has become more visible to the public, yet without explicit recognition well until August 2022 (in which the European Commission named anti-Asian racism as a standalone hate crime category, following Asian Voices Europe’s consultation), anti-Asian racism continues to fall through policy gaps, treated as isolated incidents rather than a structural issue shaped by historical injustices and current-day racial hierarchies. In a European context where anti-Asian racism is significantly minimized, rendered invisible, or framed as isolated incidents, this absence reinforces structural neglect. The Horizontal Equal Treatment Directive does not even mention anti-Asian racism once and has been stalled in the Council since 2008 [1].
[1] It could strengthen protections by outlawing discrimination beyond employment on grounds like religion or belief (complementing the Race Equality Directive)
Despite anti-Asian racism being included in NAPAR as a distinct category since August 2022 (following AVE’s recommendation to do so), and subsequently being listed as one of the forms of discrimination recognized by the EU, we have yet to see concrete action or funding allocation. Based on available records, not one CERV-funded project targeted or included anti-Asian racism or were led by Asian diaspora organisations between 2020-2025. The call for the CERV programme (2021–2024) initially focused on diverse forms of racism (antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, antigypsyism, anti-Black racism, etc.) without explicitly naming anti-Asian racism in its early calls [2]. This implies that at the program’s start, anti-Asian racism was treated under “general racial or ethnic origin” grounds. Only in 2025 did a CERV call include anti-Asian racism explicitly included “anti-Asian racism” for the first time (upon our recommendation) alongside other focal forms of intolerance, implying how late and limited this recognition has been and a long absence of dedicated EU-funded initiatives for Asian communities.
[2] In the 2021 CERV call to “promote equality and fight racism,” the priority description listed forms like antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, Afrophobia and others – notably no explicit mention of anti-Asian racism. Similarly, the 2022 call text highlighted support for groups such as Roma, Jews, Muslims, migrants, people of colour and of African descent, again omitting specific reference to people of Asian descent.
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Many EU Member States launched their own NAPARs during the 2020–2025 Action Plan period, often emphasizing certain historical or prevalent forms of racism. According to the guideline on implementing individual NAPARs, one of the checklists is to include ‘anti-Asian racism’.
Reports accessed on 31 January, 2026.
Yet, measures of anti-Asian racism are included as a national framework against racism by only 6 out of 14 member states of the EU, who adopted NAPARs by January 26, 2026. For example, in December 2024, the Swedish government adopted a new Action Plan to Combat Racism and Hate Crime, intended to fight racism both in general and in specific manifestations. The plan, built on data about racism’s prevalence, focused on five forms: “anti-Muslim racism, antisemitism, anti-Black racism, antiziganism (anti-Roma racism) and racism against the Sami (indigenous people)”, again leaving out anti-Asian incidents as a distinct category.
Swedish authorities justified their focus by pointing to “available information on the prevalence of racism in Sweden”. This is a classic example of the “no data, no problem” framing. In other words, the government prioritized combating the types of racism in Swedish data, neglecting anti-Asian racism due to its lack of inequality data collection in official statistics. Indeed, the UN CERD, in its 2023 review of Sweden, explicitly noted “the absence of measures under the Action Plan to address racial discrimination against people of Asian descent”. Despite a surge of anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic, many national frameworks in Europe were slow to recognize anti-Asian racism as a structural issue, often due to scant disaggregated data or competing political priorities.
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A Double Standard in Migration
The EU presents itself as a global defender of human rights. Unlike the previous Action Plan, the new Strategy also omits any reference to infringement procedures in migration, a key enforcement mechanism that could hold EU member states accountable for failing to implement anti-discrimination law. Migration policies are entirely absent from the strategy, despite their profound impact on racialized people. Instead, suspicion is directed toward civil society organizations, which is particularly troubling in a context where anti-racist groups already face increasing funding cuts, political pressures and public attacks on their members.
Racism is not only a matter of hate speech or individual prejudice. It is embedded in institutions, laws, healthcare, education systems, housing, and labor markets. What we demand is structural change, not symbolic gestures. At AVE, we will continue to advocate for an anti-racism agenda which is community-led, intersectional, and structurally transformative.
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Author: Hyunjung
Reviewer: Lily
Editor: Jiye
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Asian Voices Europe
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