“If necessary we will call on the EU member states to withdraw from the conference if we see violations of the core European values in Geneva,” he told a symposium on combating racism and anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) in Brussels.
“It’s out of the question for Europe to accept a compromise at any price,” he said.
Stressing the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, in particular since the beginning of this year in the wake of the Israeli operation in Gaza, Barrot, who is in charge of freedom, justice and security, pledged to make that a 2008 EU decision on racism and xenophobia be introduced in the law of each of the 27 EU member states.
The decision makes notably denial of crimes against humanity a criminal offense.
He called a renewed statement made last week by French extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen that gas chambers were a “detail of the history of WWII”, an “absolute shame”, praising the reaction of all main political groups of the European parliament.
In his opening speech, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, deplored that while anti-Semitism “is alive, in good health and growing”, “Europe doesn’t react”.
Education is one of the responses to fighting racism and anti-Semitism, he added proposing the establishment in Brussels of the first "University of tolerance and reconciliation."
Among the speakers, Ruth Halimi, mother of Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian Jew brutally murdered in 2006 by a gang because he was a Jew, made a moving testimony. “I am happy to speak about my son because what happened to him is not a detail in history,” she said. “The murderers choose Ilan because he was a Jew, because they thought that all Jews are rich”.
Ilan Halimi's assassins, all alleged members of the so-called “Barbarians Gang”, will go on trial in Paris at the end of April.
Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF and Haim Musicant, General Director, addressed the plenary sessions and a number of panel sessions. According to Haim Musicant, it is right that the European Parliament should deal with the issue of the return of anti-Semitism, “which has put on new clothes that sometimes cloak unholy alliances”. “I am hoping that this day in the Parliament will go beyond mere words of compassion and denunciation and come up with clear proposals for action”.
Several leading French figures accompanied Richard Prasquier and Haim Musicant to Brussels, among them Monsignor Philippe Barbarin, Primate of Gaul; Hassen Chalgoumi, Imam of Drancy; Mohammed Sifaoui, writer and journalist; Jean-Philippe Moinet, president of the European Civic Circle; and Raphael Haddad, president of the Union of French Jewish Students.
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