A controversy has erupted between the EU's anti-racism body and the Anti-Semitism Research Institute of Berlin's Technical University over the shelving of a report alleging that young Muslims, particularly from Middle East and North Africa, were to blame for the rise in attacks on Jews.
The Institute was asked last year to prepare the report but researchers were upset when the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia refused to publish it, claiming that it was badly written and based on poor information.
But the report's authors responded on Wednesday by claiming that their findings had been shelved because criticism of Muslims did not fit with the Centre's agenda. Prof Werner Bergmann was quoted saying the Centre repeatedly asked for the draft report to soften its conclusion about young Muslims. Left-wing anti-globalisation activists were also to partly blame.
But the Centre's Chairman Bob Purkiss countered that the work was poor, so much so that the Centre might try to recover the money paid for it. He also insisted that there was never any intention to publish the report.