THE EU justice commissioner has imposed an eight-month deadline on member states to make new plans for the integration of their Roma communities, an initiative which aims to end rampant discrimination against Europe’s biggest ethnic minority.
Viviane Reding, who has clashed with French president Nicolas Sarkozy over his administration’s Roma deportations, said national authorities faced a “serious challenge” to end Roma exclusion from schools, jobs, healthcare and housing.
As the EU executive embarked on a new initiative to guide national Roma policies and mobilise funding, Ms Reding said “some good intentions from national politicians” had done little to change lives.
“Most important to me is that member states help ensure that all Roma children complete at least primary school,” she said.
Research from Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia found that only 42 per cent of Roma children completed primary school, compared to an EU average of 97.5 per cent. In secondary schools, Roma attendance was estimated at 10 per cent.
Ms Reding provoked a storm of controversy last year when she likened French policies to Nazi-era persecutions of the Jews and Roma. While such remarks angered Mr Sarkozy, she described the affair as a “wake-up” call for Europe.
The commission’s initiative marks an attempt to put pressure on countries with large Roma populations to tackle poor rates of educational achievement, low employment and high child mortality.
However, campaigners for Roma rights said the plan was too modest. The European Roma Policy Coalition group said the measures recognised the need to fight discrimination, but it decried the lack of specific measures to combat intimidation, anti-gypsyism, hate speech or violence against Roma.
“The framework falls far short of fully tackling the challenges of Roma exclusion, which are intimately linked to widespread hostility and discrimination against the Roma people,” the group said.
There are between 10 million and 12 million Roma in Europe, the EU countries with the largest communities being Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.
In these countries, the Roma share of the population is between 7 per cent and 10 per cent.
