Recently I got an invitation from Prof. Sharon Pardo at the Ben Gurion University‘s EU Center of Excellence (Beer-Sheva, Israel) to speak at their conference entitled “Jewish Contribution to the EU Integration Process”.

Along with renowned speakers such as Mr. Andrew Standley, the EU’s Ambassador to Israel (who will unfortunately finish his mandate in a few months and move to Mexico), I’ve given a presentation called “Anti-semitism from an EU institutional perspective”.

I looked at what can European institutions do to fight against discrimination, prejudices and related challenges that poison various segments of the society. The bottom line is that formally speaking, all EU Member States have by and large proper laws in place… however, anti-semitism lives mostly in the heads and not in the laws (that would be quite inconceivable in the 21st century EU), and the best tools are those linked to education and public discourse of leading political/public figures. The former can be (and is) helped by the EU via various funds and programs, while the latter is the responsibility of Member States and their elites.

Here is the Prezi I used for the presentation – feel free to check it out! (Special thanks to Tamás Lukácsi from the European Parliament for his great insights and help!)

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