Brexit will change the face of the European Union in many ways. For one, it will make it a lot whiter.

In a bloc that hasn’t placed much focus on increasing the political representation of minorities, the U.K. stands out. Its history of conversations about race relations is wholly different from most of Europe. It’s home to some of the most extensive anti-discrimination legislation and scholarly discussions around race. And it tracks and actively promotes minority leadership in politics and businesses through government-funded programs.

Activists and some politicians in Brussels have called for U.K.-esque policies to be implemented in the EU for years — but Brexit makes that far less likely.

* * *

Migration and minorities have been part of the European story since — and because of — colonialism. But it wasn’t until the 1950s, when people from other parts of the world came to help rebuild European countries after World War II, that Europe began to grapple with how to integrate its minority populations.

Different tactics emerged among the three major immigrant-receiving societies in post-war Europe: Germany, France and the U.K.

“In France, if you identify certain people as ‘black’ and some as ‘white’ it’s seen as you denying this idea that ‘we are all French’” — Sarah Chander, anti-racism worker

Germany developed a notoriously strict citizenship policy, disallowing dual citizenship and requiring eight years of permanent residence before a foreigner is eligible for citizenship. France’s citizenship model is more lenient; it moved toward an “assimilation” model, aimed at absorbing minority cultures into an overarching “French” culture. The U.K. opted for “multiculturalism,” the idea that different cultures could coexist without being compromised.

These models have converged in recent years, but the three countries’ underlying approaches to their minority population continue to shape national discussions about race.

“In France, if you identify certain people as ‘black’ and some as ‘white’ it’s seen as you denying this idea that ‘we are all French,’” said Sarah Chander, advocacy officer at the European Network Against Racism. “That leads to a large-scale resistance to even talking about racism.”

In the U.K., Chander says there’s a “comfortableness” in talking about race and ethnicity that isn’t the case in many other European countries. She attributes this in part to the “political blackness” movement in the U.K. in the 1970s, when ethnic minorities came together to protest racism and forced conversations about race into the mainstream. In response, a Race Relations Act was passed in 1976 to prevent discrimination on the grounds of race.

Around the same time, in France, a law was passed in 1978 specifically banning the collection of race- or ethnicity-based data.

The U.K. government, by contrast, now collects data on ethnicity in the fields of health care, education, population growth, crime, employment — and representation in government institutions. That allows the U.K. to know that, for instance, roughly 13 percent of its population is of an ethnic minority background, while only 6 percent of the House of Commons is.

The U.K. has some of the most far-reaching anti-discrimination legislation in the EU, and sponsors leadership programs within universities and companies to actively encourage minorities to apply for positions. For a short time before he was elected as an MEP, Syed Kamall, leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, ran a diversity recruitment business in the U.K. that would consult with companies on how to reach out to minority communities and encourage them to apply.

“The fact that there’s awareness of the issue in the U.K., that’s important,” Kamall said. “In general, people there don’t ask, ‘Why should we increase diversity?’ They ask ‘How can we increase diversity?’”

* * *

The first step toward improving minority underrepresentation, according to the British model, is the same first step toward addressing any policy problem: quantifying it. Without concrete statistics, it’s impossible to speak authoritatively about the extent to which minorities are discriminated against.

Once data has been collected, improving representation is a combination of legislation and cultural shifts — legal assurances of anti-discrimination, like the U.K.’s Race Relations Act, and cultural steps to show that minorities would be welcomed in the workplace, like Kamall’s outreach to minority communities.

The U.K. has a variety of programs, both government-sponsored and privately-run, trying to spur those shifts. There’s the Public Sector Equality Duty, which requires public authorities to prove that they aren’t just avoiding discrimination but actively promoting equality and increasing diversity. There’s the Vision 2020 plan, published in 2015 by then Prime Minister David Cameron, that promised to increase minority employment by 20 percent. (Theresa May’s government hasn’t spoken specifically about continuing this pledge, but the prime minister has introduced equality initiatives of her own.) And the conversation is beginning about name-blind job and university applications, in an effort to combat racial bias against applicants from ethnic minorities based on their names.

Farah Elahi, a research and policy analyst at the U.K. race equality think tank Runnymede Trust, said these steps are promising, but it’s important not to oversell the U.K. as a diversity utopia.

“It’s a nuanced picture,” Elahi said. “Even when minorities get their foot in the door in the U.K., they find it harder to move up the career ladder. People will often say ‘At least it’s not as bad as France or other countries.’ But for us it’s still not adequate.”

There is at least one organization in France working to begin a similar process. Since 2007, the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN) has crowdsourced data on ethnic statistics in several sectors in France. Louis-Georges Tin, chairperson of CRAN, said this type of mass collection is legal, as opposed to race-related data on individuals.

“Ethnic statistics are totally legal in France, but most people don’t want to use them,” Tin said. “They don’t want to realize how vast the discrimination is.”

Tin said he has seen firsthand that collecting statistics can lead to improvement in an industry: CRAN urged the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) in 2009 to collect data on minorities in French media. The number of non-white people on television has increased from 4 percent in 2009 to 13 percent currently, which according to Tin is more or less reflective of French society.

It’s a promising step, and an improvement from the early days when Tin said even other anti-racist organizations opposed the collection of data on ethnicity. But it doesn’t necessarily reflect the mainstream French attitude. French President Emmanuel Macron has never broached the subject of data collection — and while he’s spoken positively about diversity, CRAN’s data shows that his cabinet is just 9 percent non-white, down from 20 percent in 2014 and the lowest representation ratio since 2002.

* * *

Like France, the EU takes a “color-blind” approach to racial and ethnic diversity. The European Commission puts out an annual report on equality that only discusses gender parity. A comprehensive EU anti-discrimination law has been stalled for years, leaving some populations vulnerable to discrimination in non-employment sectors. And EU institutions do not collect data on how many racial or ethnic minorities they employ.

The Commission says it doesn’t look into tracking diversity because it’s not sure the practice is legal.

“Countries who select data have legal basis,” Marlene Holzner, from European Commissioner for Human Resources Günther Oettinger’s office, said over email. “We have not.”

Chander at the European Network Against Racism estimates that less than 1 percent of people who work in the institutions are people of color. POLITICO conducted an informal survey of around 2,000 top EU employees and estimated that barely 1 percent are non-white. In 2007, the Guardian examined the racial makeup of the Parliament and found 13 non-white MEPs out of 781; POLITICO and activist groups did an informal count this year and found that the ratio had barely increased, at 17 out of 751, around half of them British MEPs.

Ironically, the EU advocates for ethnic data collection — in individual member countries. A 2016 handbook released by the Commission last year offers advice for member countries on how and why to collect “equality data.”

“Only through independent and sound information outlining the reality of EU citizens can we truly go forward in the quest for an equal society across Europe,” the introduction reads.

Despite this, Chander said she’s received pushback from the Commission and others who deny that racial underrepresentation of minorities is a problem.

“I remember a journalist once said to an EU spokesperson, ‘You know, it’s very white in the European institutions,’” Chander recalled. “And the spokesperson responded, ‘I do not accept that, I do not believe that.’ And right now people can just say stuff like that, and there’s no proof otherwise.”

* * *

Advocates say increasing diversity is important for two reasons. First, in the superficial sense, having more ethnically diverse faces working in the EU sends a message to the world, and to other minorities, that Europe is a place where they can feel comfortable.

“I’m the first non-white, non-Christian group leader in the Parliament,” Kamall said. “And every year people of a minority background, whatever group they’re from, come up to me and say, ‘We’re really proud of what you’ve done.’”

“After Brexit, in terms of fighting racism and discrimination, the EU is going to be worse off" — Alfiaz Vaiya, the coordinator of the Parliament’s anti-racism and diversity intergroup

Second, there’s the policy impact of having people of a diverse background making legislative decisions.

“I don’t believe you have to be a person of color to care about racial equality, of course you don’t,” Chander said. “But it’s a very different thing to care about something and to bring your experiences to the table.”

Of the 17 MEPs of an ethnic minority background, eight are from the U.K. Beyond the elected officials, the U.K. employs many of the assistants and advisers from minority backgrounds in the Parliament.

“After Brexit, in terms of fighting racism and discrimination, the EU is going to be worse off,” Alfiaz Vaiya, the coordinator of the Parliament’s anti-racism and diversity intergroup, said. “It’s losing a fundamental member state that, whether under Labour or Conservative governments, has advocated for anti-discrimination policy.”