A/HRC/25/69 53. With regard to a question posed by a participant on freedom of religion and belief, the Commissioner noted that while in the past, the Church was prohibited it now plays a very important role in the society, with implications for the political and legal situation in the country. She explained that people were facing problems with legislation regarding data protection, due to religious belief and could contact the her office which could discuss it with the respective state body in order to solve the problem. She said that there had been positive experiences with regard to this issue. 54. At the 9th meeting on 29 July, Ms. Eva Sobotka, Programme Manager at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) gave a presentation entitled “Developments and Trends on racism, racial discrimination, Roma, and crimes motivated by racism, xenophobia and related intolerance in the EU”. She provided an overview of the mandate of FRA, as contained in primary and secondary legislation, including article 3, paragraph 3 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU), articles 10 and 19 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Racial Equality Directive (RED) 2000/43/EC. She also referred to Communication COM (2011) 173 on the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020. 55. With regard to key developments in the area of racism and ethnic discrimination, Ms. Sobotka noted the persistence of mainstreaming of elements of extremist ideology in political and public discourse and ethnic discrimination in healthcare, education, employment and housing, throughout the European Union (EU). She said that Member States had made efforts to develop comprehensive approaches to Roma integration. Nevertheless, more has to be done in order to secure sufficient funding for Roma inclusion and ensure that it benefits the targeted groups, put in place robust and effective monitoring mechanisms, and fight discrimination and segregation. She highlighted that several Member States had addressed crimes motivated by racism, xenophobia and related intolerances, by redefining what constitutes such crimes, and changing and enhancing their data collection systems. Some Member States had taken steps to enable the collection of data disaggregated by ethnicity, thereby allowing for better recording and identification of potentially discriminatory practices. 56. Ms. Sobotka pointed out that when considering trends, it was important not to confuse the rate of recorded incidents of racist, xenophobic and related crime with the actual rate of such crimes, as it is widely acknowledged that this type of crime is grossly under-recorded. Moreover, variations observed within EU Member States from one year to the next could be the result of: (1) how these crimes are defined in criminal law; (2) changes in how (the characteristics of) incidents are recorded; (3) the willingness of victims and/or witnesses to report incidents; and, (4) the actual occurrence of racist, xenophobic and related crime. 57. She also presented results from the 2012 survey, which included Roma and nonRoma respondents, in the areas of poverty, housing, education, employment and discrimination. She noted that 60% of the Roma respondents identified members of the majority population as being the perpetrators with regard to the last incident of assault, threat or serious harassment they had experienced, which makes it clear that ‘racist’ perpetrators are not only a product of extremist ‘racist’ gangs but also from the general population. The results indicated that reasons for non-reporting are less often to do with the trivial nature of an incident (32%) and more to do with lack of confidence in the police and law enforcement (72%). 58. She concluded that making hate crimes visible and acknowledging the rights of victims of crimes entails taking action at three levels: legislation, policy and practice. She said that with regard to legislation, it means recognising hate crime, the bias motivations underlying it and the effect it has on victims in both national legislation and European law. At the policy level, it means implementing policies that will lead to collecting reliable data on hate crime that would record, at a minimum, the number of incidents of hate crime 30