VIENNA, Austria: In many member states of the European Union, migrant workers from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America are facing high levels of discrimination.

Annual report 2005 of the Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) released this week said Muslim groups face particularly "challenging conditions in many EU member states."

However, the Roma (gypsies) emerge as the group most vulnerable to racism in the EU.

The 104-page report looks at the evidence of discrimination in employment, housing and education, as well as racist crime data, and at measures being taken to combat this.

"Candidates with foreign names, in particular Arabic names are consistently excluded from interviews and hence from employment," Beate Winkler, Director of the EUMC, told a press conference after presenting the report to the European Parliament in Brussels.