ERRC Says Romania Continues to Flout European Court of Human Rights

19 July 2011

Budapest, 19 July 2011: Today the European Roma Rights Centre submitted a report to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers highlighting the Romanian State’s failure to comply with several European Court of Human Rights judgments against Romania in cases of anti-Roma pogroms.

The submission involved Moldovan and others v Romania (Nos.1 & 2) and two other linked cases, all of them involving anti-Roma violence. This implementation report demonstrates that the Romanian government has failed to rebuild the affected communities and to address the interethnic tension, as the Court prescribed through general measures. Although it has been more than 6 years since the first of these judgments and nearly 20 years since the attacks on people and property, the devastated and divided communities remain without the promised support.

Although an action plan was formulated, upon its expiration in 2008, the forseen measures to compensate the victims were not met. Disappointingly, a new Action Plan recently submitted by the Romanian government to the Committee of Ministers does not contain sufficient or adequate content to improve conditions in the community and lacks clear, measurable and comprehensive timelines.

With this submission, the ERRC calls for the Committee of Ministers to classify these cases to be examined under the “enhanced supervision” regime. This status allows the Committee to focus on judgments meriting priority attention. The ERRC submission argues that these cases represent major structural and complex problems and are characterised by repeated and serious delays in implementation.

For further information, contact:

Sinan Gökçen
ERRC Media and Communications Officer
sinan.gokcen@errc.org
+36.30.500.1324