There must be a clear commitment from governments to outlaw racial discrimination before any move towards European legislation on the issue, a Commission official told the conference.
Ms Annette Bosscher, head of Directorate General V of the European Commission, was summing up the conclusions of the two-day conference in Innsbruck on combating racism.
The conference had discussed the relevance to Europe of "affirmative action" policies as pursued in Canada and the US which sought to overcome the heritage of structural and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities and women. If the EU did decide to use affirmative action in its anti-discrimination legislation, it must choose its language very carefully, she said.
Any such measures would be effective only if they were combined with programmes to implement change, and if the main actors, including the social partners, were involved. Their effectiveness would also require political will to implement them.
The conference is one of a series of initiatives organised by EU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, to assist him in preparing new anti-discrimination legislation in line with the Amsterdam Treaty.
Article 13 of the Treaty provides, for the first time, for action in Europe against racial discrimination. "Mr Flynn wanted large consultation on the scope and content of such legislation," Ms Bosscher told The Irish Times.
As a result, there had been meetings of senior officials dealing with equality, submissions from NGOs, conferences, and, it was decided, a look at other experiences outside the US "so that we don't reinvent the wheel", she said.
However, the EU had already its own considerable body of experience on fighting discrimination against women, and this too would be useful in extending that policy to immigrants and ethnic minorities, she said.