European No man's land

international | eu | opinion/analysis Thursday April 29, 2004 19:00 by ERIO - European Roma Information Office, Brussels

In the enlarged Europe there is a potential risk that neither the nationall governments, nor the EU will feel responsible to end the plight of the Roma.

European No man’s Land
European Roma Information Office

A few weeks ago, the Roma community of Trebisov buried the dead body of Radoslav Puky. The 29-years old man was found dead in one of the city's canals a few days after a few thousand police officers and troops had descended to Slovakia's deprived East, where a desperate population of mainly Roma upsurged against severe cuts of the social benefits. Despites Puky's broken ribcage the prosecutor in charge of the investigations into his death concluded that the Rom had died from drowning. But for Puky's fellows Puky is a victim of police persecution and a victim of the ongoing discrimination against Roma in Slovakia.

Slovakia is among the countries that will be joining the EU on Saturday, a model perhaps when it comes to apply neoliberal recipes to a capsizing economy, but certainly not a model with regards to the integration of its Roma minority. A World Bank report from 2003 found for instance that the number of Roma settlements has increased dramatically since the end of the 1980s and that the number of Roma who are forced to live in these settlements has likewise increased. A country report by the European
Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, a Council of Europe body, from January this year concluded that "the Roma minority remains severely disadvantaged in most areas of life, particularly in the fields of housing, employment and education.", and that the proclaimed goal of improving the situation of the Roma "has not been translated into adequate resources and a concerted interest and commitment on the part of all the administrative sectors involved."

Last year, the UNDP found that the Central and East European Roma face living conditions close to those of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa with one out of six facing regularly starvation. The UNDP also warned that the countries might rapidly loose the opportunities provided by EU accession if they fail to integrate the Roma: "The risk is that, if postponed, the cost of finding solutions will be immeasurably higher and will have few chances of success.", the survey said adding that: "The human security costs of exclusion will spiral, potentially resulting in political extremism and
setbacks for the democratic process."

It is now more than a decade ago that the European Union started pushing the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to improve the situation of their minorities, in particular of the Roma. In 1993, the European Council adopted the so-called Copenhagen criteria. Subsequently, human rights and the rights of minorities have been part of the requirements a country has to fulfil if it wants to join the EU. Much has been done since. Mainly upon pressure of the EU and international organisations the countries signed international conventions consecrating the rights of minorities and the banning of discrimination. Anti-discrimination laws were adopted, bodies of self-representation for minorities installed. Most of the acceding states have today strategies for the inclusion of their Roma communities, which most of the current EU members ironically lack.

But this is obviously just one side of the coin. On the ground discrimination against Roma has continued and continues to remain largely unpunished. In November last year, Olga David, a Romani woman from Petrosani, Central Romania, was beaten to death by private security guards who caught her stealing coal. Media in CEE continue to spread racially biased reports about Roma, fostering stereotypes and prejudices. Political representatives have no problem to engage in a racist discourse where Roma
range as second-class citizens or not even citizens at all of countries they have lived in for centuries.

While the European Commission carefully monitored these developments and regularly reminded the countries that they need to put greater efforts on improving the situation of Roma, Roma rights activists have recently felt that the attention on human rights issues lessened. The European Union seems today much more preoccupied with the economic situation in Eastern Europe and in the West to care for much about human rights and the rights of minorities which are anyway internal matters of the member states and not within the competencies of the Union. It is symptomatic that the act of turning the army against a civilian population and the alleged abuses and mistreatment of people, mainly Roma, by the police reported by human rights organizations as it happened in Slovakia did not induce any blame from Brussels.

The EU has always taken an ambiguous stance towards the situation of the east European Roma. It advocated for their rights while they stayed in their countries, but its single member states have systematically rejected their claims as soon as they left them. Hundreds of Romani asylum seekers from Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic saw their asylum applications turned down on the grounds that they were considered as mere economic refugees. Four years ago, the Belgian authorities deported a group of 74 Roma asylum seekers from Slovakia, for which Belgium was later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, because collective deportations are against the European Charta of European Rights. Only in a few exceptions was the plight of the east European Roma acknowledged such as in 2001 when France granted asylum to several Roma from the Hungarian village of Zamoly where they had seen their houses
demolished by the city council and been exposed to death threats.

The Union itself lacks a policy to address the plight of the Roma. Discrimination is widespread, not just in the countries of central and Eastern Europe, but also within the old member states. The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded for instance just recently that Roma in Spain continue to be discriminated against in almost all fields of social life and recommended the Spanish government "to take all the necessary measures in order to overcome prejudices and negative
stereotypes in order to put an end to any form of discrimination." Oberwart, a place otherwise unknown in Austria, received a Europe-wide reputation, when in February 1995 four Roma were killed by a pipe bomb specially targeted towards them. Less then four weeks ago, two Romani girls from Romania died in Lyon when the makeshift housing where they lived in caught fire. The teenagers belonged to a larger group of Romani asylum seekers from Romania and Yugoslavia who had settled on a wasteland in the city's centre. True, it was not racism that killed them, but they died from the lack of concern of the French authorities in charge of receiving the asylum seekers.

The European Summit in Helsinki in December 1999 ended with a vague recommendation that "[s]pecial attention should be paid to the improvement of the situation of those groups which do not form a majority in any State, including the Roma." It was further said that "[t]he European Union is committed to working to achieve this objective together with the Council of Europe and the OSCE." It is highly telling that the item was put under "External Relations", thus leaving it open whether this was something which concerned the EU member states themselves or only the relations with others. Some of the later Presidencies took up the engagement of organising regular meetings dealing with issues affecting Roma, but no real commitment, no clear agenda came out. At the Commission level, there are several directorates dealing with issues affecting Roma, but there is no integrated approach and no single telephone number( to put it in the words of Henry Kissinger) to be called when seeking an answer to the multiple and interlinked problems affecting Roma. There is for instance no effective way of tackling with the low school performance of Romani children, if social discrimination, poverty, deprivation and poor housing conditions within the Romani communities are not addressed at the same time.

EU enlargement brings new opportunities and risks. The unification, once the Enlargement is completed, of eight to ten millions Roma in a single political space, gives Roma new opportunities to unify their voices and to bargain together for an end of their discrimination and their recognition as equal citizens. But with this opportunity there is also a risk: It is the risk that the Roma will be even more thrown to and fro between the national and the European level with ultimately none of them, taking the responsibility to end their plight. In the wake of Enlargement, a commitment is required that European values and the rights of European citizens are also valid for Europe's most discriminated and most marginalised minority. Europe has to turn a page of its history where discrimination and exclusion of the perceived others has been a funding element of its identity.