The crossover between far-right groups and hardcore football fans, in the spotlight after a race-tinged riot in 2018 World Cup host Russia, is a concern for Poland and Ukraine as Euro 2012 edges closer.
While neither European Championship host has faced trouble on the scale seen last month in Moscow, where 5,000 ultranationalists and hooligans clashed with police, the issue is firmly in focus.
“It is vital to step up anti-racist activities in Eastern European countries as they prepare to host major international sports events,” said Piara Powar, head of Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), which is backed by UEFA, FIFA and the EU.
Adam Rapacki, a senior official at Poland’s interior ministry and former top policeman, said tackling the problem is “high on everyone’s agenda”.
Since the Iron Curtain fell two decades ago, far-right groups have fed on and stoked social and ethnic tensions across the ex-communist bloc. They have found fertile ground among some fans who worship England’s once-notorious hooligan “firms”.
“I think there’s a grain of truth about Eastern European fan culture today being similar to English fan culture in the 1980s,” said Rafal Pankowski, who steers FARE’s regional arm.
“And that’s not a great picture, of course.”
Pankowski also runs the Polish anti-racist movement Never Again, which in 1996 launched the nation’s first football-focused campaign.
At the time, they were a voice in the wilderness. Since then, they have logged incidents painstakingly, prodding Polish authorities, clubs and public to wake up.
Far-right banners or racist chanting against black players are seen from the top flight down to local leagues.
Nazi imagery and anti-Semitic slogans are particularly shocking given Eastern Europe’s World War II history, when millions perished at the hands of the occupying Germans, including the overwhelming majority of the region’s Jews.
Pankowski’s team tries to build bridges with fans.
“I think it’s hopeless to talk to the committed racists. But there are some fan groups that are more or less open, at least you can have a conversation with them,” he said.
Polish authorities, faulted in the past, have cracked down, winning praise from UEFA. Prosecutors have investigated dozens of incidents, and 1,800 people have been slapped with hooliganism-related stadium bans, under new rules in force since March 2009.
The Polish FA can punish clubs that fail to stamp out the problem, although the penalties look paltry in western European terms.
A starkly anti-Semitic banner at a second division match in May led to a 2,500-zloty (627-euro) fine for Stal Rzeszow, whose fans were banned from matches for three weeks.
The situation looks worse in Ukraine, with a far-right foothold among fans of clubs such as Dynamo Kiev.
“Some of the displays of racism and neo-Nazism in Ukraine are rather graphic,” said Pankowski.
“There’s still work to do, for us, and for Ukrainian authorities, and for Ukrainian society, in terms of getting to a point where the problem is acknowledged as serious. I think we’ve passed this moment in Poland,” he said.
The region’s hooligans are not alone in looking to English football for inspiration.
Campaigners draw force from its largely successful battle against racism.
“England is a very good example to follow, and it’s a very optimistic example, because it shows that it can be done,” said Pankowski.