"There is rising anti-Semitism, there is rising Islamophobia, there is rising homophobia," Frans Timmermans, deputy to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told parliamentarians from EU states meeting in Latvia's capital Riga.
"There are people who are actually challenging the position of women in European society," said Timmermans, who was visiting the Baltic state in connection with its six-month stint as EU president.
"This cannot happen. We need to put the rule of law front and centre in our European discussions because if we don't have that, we have nothing.
Islamist attacks January 7-9 against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish kosher grocery in Paris last month killed 17.
Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, on January 27, European Jewish Congress chief Moshe Kantor warned last week that Europe was "close to" a new exodus of Jews, saying "jihadism is very close to Nazism".
The number of anti-Muslim incidents in France has soared since the Paris attacks, with 128 such acts registered over two weeks, almost the same amount as all 2014, according the French National Observatory Against Islamophobia.
"There are people who are actually challenging the position of women in European society," said Timmermans, who was visiting the Baltic state in connection with its six-month stint as EU president.