The Council of Europe has come under fire from Italian leaders after the publication of a report accusing the country’s police force of racist and homophobic abuse.

In its latest snapshot of Italy, published on Monday, the ECRI, the council’s independent human rights monitoring body, said that during a visit to Italy its delegation learned about “many accounts of racial profiling by law enforcement officials that impacts especially the Roma community and people of African descent”.

The accounts of “frequent stop and account activities based on ethnicity” were substantiated by reports from civil society organisations and international monitoring bodies, the report added.