RACIST policing is widely under-reported in the European Union, a damning new report said today.

The EU’s Vienna-based Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) said most EU countries had “no official data sources on racist incidents and discrimination involving the police.”

The report said that only a few member states separately recorded incidents of police racism and of that number only Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands publish the data.

Previous research by the FRA showed that across the EU young men, ethnic minorities, Muslims or people not identifying as heterosexual were more likely to be stopped by the police.

The report said: “The number of officially recorded incidents of police racism is very low. 

“This makes it impossible to assess the prevalence of the issue.”

The report says that the low number of recorded cases did not mean that “racist policing doesn’t exist” and pointed to evidence of levels of racism from surveys, media reports and civil society organisations.

The agency called on EU countries to systematically record and report racist incidents by the police.

The report also calls on member states to strengthen national laws against “racial and ethnic discrimination and racism.”

The FRA said that the highest number of people of African descent stopped by the police were in Austria, followed by Germany and Ireland.