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Secretary General’s Special Representative Alexandre Guessel addressed an audience at the Venice University during an event co-organized by the Council of Europe’s Venice Office. In his online address to the “Memory, law and rights: Antisemitism and discrimination based on religion” session, the SRSG spoke about the Council of Europe’s standards in the area of combatting antisemitism, hate speech and religious discrimination.
Mr. Guessel concentrated on the work of the Council of Europe institutions and monitoring mechanisms in particular underlying the activities of the PACE, the CoE Commissioner for Human Rights and the ECRI, as well as the jurisprudence of the ECtHR in upholding the European principles and combatting antisemitism.
Ambassador Luisella Pavan-Woolfe, Director of the Venice Office of the Council of Europe, Prof. Ahmed Shaheed, former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Milena Santerini, the Italian National Coordinator for the fight against anti-Semitism, and Federico Faloppa Professor at the University of Reading were among the speakers of the event.
In recent years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in hate crimes in many parts of Europe, often incited and aggravated by hate speech online. The specific task of my Special Representative is to join forces at the European level and to ensure the collective expertise of the Council of Europe is put to full use in our common effort to prevent antisemitic, anti-Muslim and other forms of religious intolerance and hate crimes. 
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