Claude Moraes: It is the duty of politicians to fight the far right

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You could look at the Vlaams Bloc in Belgium, you could look at the List Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, the Danish People's Party in Denmark, the Northern League and MSI in Italy – survey all the European Union countries, decide for yourself what kind of threat the far-right parties present, and you can come up with all sorts of conclusions. My conclusion, however, having observed it from within Brussels and Strasbourg and travelled to countries where the far right has been an issue, is that it isn't just a question of the far right gaining power, or gaining absolute power– they haven't actually got a majority in any national government.

The issue for me is one of what I would call mainstreaming. There are ideas created on the far right that find their way into the mainstream of politics. There are ideas which become acceptable because the far right has gone through a kind of trajectory of initiating or reinitiating these ideas. Those ideas then lose their shock value and become more acceptable; they are seen as as "populist", and are therefore taken on board by mainstream governments and coalitions.

We have an ageing European population, and at some point in the next 15 to 20 years we may need some immigration. But so politically sensitive is immigration that policy-makers and governments don't want to talk about it or prepare for it, because if they do they are often criticised. The mainstream of politics and mainstream of government is thus affected by far-right fears and ideas.

We will soon have a European Union of 25 countries. When I began as an MEP, I was put on the Legal Affairs Committee, where I had to analyse a report on racism and anti-Semitism in the candidate countries. It was shocking to look at the way the Roma lead their daily lives in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Issues such as sterilisation are commonly spoken about, and even in government you find that the old ideas are still very much alive. Mainstream politicians simply fail to set a tone of leadership that states that such ideas are unacceptable.

It is the duty of politicians to fight the far right. If we don't detect racism and stamp it out, we are guilty of allowing mainstream governments to take those ideas and to put them into practice.