A/HRC/29/46 35. The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe has consistently condemned the practice of racial and ethnic profiling and has stated that it constitutes a potential violation of article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Commissioner has warned about the underlying assumption behind terrorist profiling and has denounced the large number of innocent people harassed as a result of the practice. The Commissioner has also questioned the effectiveness and results of the practice, warned against its deleterious effects on police–community relations, and recommended that effective policing methods be developed that are based on individual behaviour or accumulated intelligence or both. Similarly, the Commissioner has stated that stop-andsearch actions based on ethnic or religious grounds are counterproductive and violate human rights standards. The Commissioner has called for the establishment of a reasonable suspicion standard as the basis for stop and search by law enforcement officials. Finally, the Commissioner has denounced ethnic profiling practices targeting Roma, including special (biometric) databases, police raids and discriminatory border checks, as well as the disproportionate levels of stop and search, and has called for an end to these practices, and has recommended the monitoring of police activities, in particular through the collection of disaggregated data.27 36. The European Union has adopted a legal framework with provisions against racial and ethnic profiling, including in the consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union and the consolidated Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Moreover, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has provisions for guaranteeing equality before the law and prohibiting discrimination. In addition, the Council of the European Union adopted its racial equality directive on 29 June 2000, which enshrines the principle of equal treatment of persons, irrespective of their racial or ethnic origin.28 37. The Special Rapporteur also notes that the European Parliament issued a recommendation on profiling, in particular on the basis of ethnicity and race, in counterterrorism, law enforcement, immigration, customs, and border control, stating that racial and ethnic profiling raised “deep concerns about conflict with non-discrimination norms”.29 The European Parliament stressed that the use of ethnicity, national origin or religion as factors in law enforcement investigations “must pass the scrutiny tests of effectiveness, necessity and proportionality”, warned that “profiling based on stereotypical assumptions may exacerbate sentiments of hostility and xenophobia in the general public”, and recommended the adoption of a clear definition of profiling, the use of anonymous ethnic statistics to identify discrimination in law enforcement practices, the establishment of strong safeguards, and effective and accessible redress mechanisms for victims of profiling. 38. The European Union Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights issued an opinion on racial and ethnic profiling in 2006, in which it recommended the adoption of a legal framework to prohibit this practice, to the extent that factors such as race or ethnicity or religion or national origin should not be used as indicators of criminal behaviour, either in general or in the specific context of counter-terrorism. It also recommended the use of statistics to highlight the discriminatory attitudes of law enforcement agencies practising racial profiling. The Network recommended States to define with the greatest clarity possible the conditions under which law enforcement 27 28 29 Council of Europe Commissioner of Human Rights, Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe (Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing, 2012), p. 84. Council directive of 29 June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin (2000/43/EC). European Parliament recommendation to the Council of 24 April 2009 on the problem of profiling, notably on the basis of ethnicity and race, in counter-terrorism, law enforcement, immigration, customs and border control (2008/2020(INI)). 11