The author deals with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights with regard to hate crimes. The paper presents and analyzes the Court judgments entailing the obligation to examine the existence of prejudice in the committed offenses, envisaged in Articles 2, 3 and 8 in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention. The Court’s case-law initially pertained to hate crimes committed by state authorities, but it subsequently evolved to cover hate crimes committed by individuals. At the end of the paper, the author presents a normative framework of hate crimes in the Republic of Serbia and points out to the shortcomings in the mode of incrimination, as well as to the problem of not applying the standards established by the Court in investigating the existence of possible prejudice in the committed crimes.