European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
But Continent still has more to do, declares Margaritis Schinas.
Europe has a better record on race issues than the United States but still needs to do more, European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas said Wednesday.
“There is no doubt that Europe as a whole has been doing better than the United States in issues of race, also because we have better systems for social inclusion, protection, universal health care,” Schinas said in a video interview organized by the Delphi Economic Forum, a Greece-based nonprofit.
“And there’s also a European tradition for protecting minorities, we have less issues than they have in the States,” added Schinas, the Commission vice president charged with “promoting our European Way of Life.”
He was responding to a question from his interviewer, POLITICO’s Florian Eder, about whether the protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis suggested a need for a new awareness that racial discrimination is also an issue in Europe.
Schinas said Europe’s record “doesn’t mean that we don’t have some way still to go in terms of fostering equality and inclusion, income distribution — all these are issues that Europe has still to address.”
