The most widely used definition of ‘Antigypsyism’ – a concept that rather recently entered European political parlance owing to initiatives by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). It is a term coined in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when ECRI issued Recommendations specifically geared towards combating racism and intolerance against Sinti and Roma people (see, for example, the General Policy Recommendation No. 3, 6 March 1998).

A more recent definition has been proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which adopted its own, non-legally binding, operational definition in 2020.

The ECRI definition for the Council of Europe

Antigypsyism is a particularly persistent, violent, recurring and common form of racism linked to an ideology based on racial superiority. It is a form of dehumanisation and institutional racism fuelled by historical discrimination, which expresses itself through violence, hate speech, exploitation, stigmatisation and the most overt forms of discrimination, among other things.

The definition proposed by IHRA

Anti-Roma/Sinti Antigypsyism/discrimination is a manifestation of individual expressions and acts, as well as institutional policies and practices of marginalisation, exclusion, physical violence, devaluation of Roma and Sinti culture and lifestyles, and hate speech directed at Sinti, Roma, and other individuals and groups, stigmatised or persecuted during the Nazi era, who are still stigmatised as ‘Gypsies’ today. This leads to the treatment of Roma and Sinti people as a supposedly alien group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism.