The 2024 annual report of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), published on 28 May 2025, focuses on four main concerns affecting all members of the Council of Europe: combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials, addressing school segregation of Roma children, ensuring equal rights and dignity for transgender and intersex people, and strengthening national equality bodies.

In particular, ECRI notes with concern the frequent use in certain States of stop-and-search practices by law enforcement officers, based on national or ethnic origin, skin colour, religion or citizenship. ECRI has identified such practices during visits to several countries in 2024, in the context of border controls, in the fight against terrorism or extremism, or in policing specific geographical areas.

The annual report does not refer to any particular state, but the Italian government, mindful of the same observations contained in the ECRI report on Italy of 2024, has rejected with particular emphasis the criticisms addressed by ECRI to the police forces and the invitation to study the phenomenon of discriminatory practices of the police in order to remedy them. The Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, in a message on social media defined such criticisms as "simply shameful", based on "unfounded judgements, the result of an ideological approach and evident prejudices". In the recent past, the Italian authorities have already rejected the findings of the Council of Europe several times, going so far as to question the function and usefulness of the Organisation to the point of defining it as "harmful" in the words of the Minister of the Interior on the occasion of this latest ECRI report.