This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A Belgian MP has told a Ukip conference that Muslims are staging a “Trojan horse”-style invasion of Europe.

Speaking to Ukip members in Blackpool on Saturday, Aldo Carcaci, an MP for the right-wing Belgian People’s party, said that “Muslim immigration from across the Mediterranean is getting totally out of proportion”.

In an audio recording obtained by the Guardian, Carcaci can be heard saying: “It is not immigration, it’s invasion. Europe is totally inefficient in tackling it.”

After his speech, he was heard telling people attending the Ukip North West conference: “It’s an invasion, it’s a Trojan horse … It is for us, we are in the end of civilisation. Because if we continue to accept the Muslim immigration, for us, it’s a big problem”.

A Ukip spokesman said: “Mr Carcaci is not a member of Ukip, and nor do we sanction his phraseology,” but added: “It is true that migration is out of control”.

Carcaci – who was described in the programme as a “Belgian MP, People’s Party, EFDD, ADDE Representative” – was given a prime spot at the conference and took to the stage after Neil Hamilton, a former prominent Conservative MP, and before Paul Nuttall, the deputy party leader and a Ukip MEP.

The Belgian People’s party is in the same pan-European political group

as Ukip, the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE). The ADDE group includes anti-immigration parties from across Europe, including the Swedish Democrats, who have been accused of antisemitism and labelled xenophobic by the Swedish broadcasting commission.

Carcaci’s speech comes after Ukip figures have come under renewed fire in recent weeks for making comments that have been called Islamophobic.



In an interview with Trevor Phillips, the former former equality and human rights commissioner, to air on Thursday night on Channel 4, Nigel Farage says that some Muslims want to form “a fifth column and kill us”, and that there has never before been a migrant group that wants to “change who we are and what we are”.

UKIP (@UKIP) We welcome Aldo Carcaci MP from the Belgian People's Party to speak at our #UKIPNWConf pic.twitter.com/1mUG8GFEWq

Earlier this week, Ukip MEP David Coburn compared Scottish government minister Humza Yousaf to convicted terrorist Abu Hamza, something Ukip leader Nigel Farage dismissed as a “joke in poor taste”.

Farage, who argues that his party is “colour-blind”, has made immigration a key plank of his election campaign, saying the party would reduce numbers by leaving the European Union, banning unskilled migrants for five years and bringing in an Australian-style points-based immigration system.



The Ukip leader has been able to exploit David Cameron’s failure to meet his target of bringing down net migration to the tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands, with the current figure running at almost 300,000.