Roma Day 2004 Call for Social Inclusion of Roma in Europe

08 April 2004

International Roma Day 2004
Action for the Social Inclusion of Roma in Europe

On the occasion of International Roma Day, April 8, 2004, the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) makes public documents sent throughout the early months of 2004 to the European Commission, as well as to relevant government officials, urging that Roma issues be given adequate attention in European social inclusion processes.

Throughout Europe, Roma remain to date the subject of powerful exclusionary forces. Anti-Romani hostility results in racial discrimination and other burdens hindering many Roma from full participation in the societies in which they live. Actions to combat these phenomena are still fledgling, but are now underway. In recent years, a number of international organisations have begun undertakings aimed at combating anti-Romani racism and the full inclusion of Roma. These include:

• A Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2015), announced in June 2003 in Budapest, an initiative of the Open Society Institute and the World Bank;
• The adoption in 2003 by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) of an Action Plan on Improving the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE area;
• Efforts to establish a European Roma Forum to be based at the Council of Europe, aiming to provide a medium through which Romani inclusion in decision-making can be secured to a greater extent than is currently the norm.
• The European Union (EU) has funded an extensive range of projects focussing on Roma in current Member States, accession countries and other states. In addition, the EU recently begun undertaking a report on Roma in an Enlarged Europe, and the same theme will be the subject of a major conference this Spring.

The 2000 Lisbon European Council of the European Union governments concluded with resolutions to redouble efforts at combating social exclusion in Europe. In particular, the European Council invited the European Council and the European Commission to:

• promote a better understanding of social exclusion through continued dialogue and exchanges of information and best practice;
• mainstream the promotion of inclusion in Member States' employment, education and training, health and housing policies;
• develop priority actions addressed to specific target groups (for example minority groups, children, the elderly and the disabled), with European Union Member States choosing amongst those actions according to their particular situations and reporting subsequently on their implementation.

Since then, European Union Member States have developed and implemented, on a two-yearly basis, National Action Plans to combat social exclusion.

The ten countries joining the European Union next month are currently in the process of joining these policy frameworks. A first step was the development by each government and the European Commission of "Joint Inclusion Memoranda" describing existing policies for combating social exclusion in the country at issue. These were signed in Brussels by the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs and the relevant government officials on December 18, 2003 and are available on the Internet Website of the European Union at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/soc-prot/soc-incl/jim_en.html.

During the early months of 2004, the ERRC has offered written comments on the Joint Inclusion Memoranda of seven countries to the European Commission and relevant government officials:
* The Czech Republic
* Hungary
* Latvia
* Lithuania
* Poland
* Slovakia
* Slovenia
These documents are available for viewing and download on the ERRC website at: http://errc.org. They focus on areas in which the governments of the countries listed should improve social inclusion policies where Roma are concerned in the fields of education, employment, healthcare, housing and social security. In addition, they point out areas in which statistical data on Roma is unavailable in a number of sectoral fields, significantly hindering the development and implementation of social inclusion policies. The documents also point out existing deficiencies in anti-discrimination law, where these exist.

There is a pressing need now to ensure that efforts at the social inclusion of Roma be rigorously undertaken throughout Europe. The documents above focus on issues Roma face in some of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that human rights issues facing Roma have received greater attention than elsewhere in recent years, major problems such as endemic discrimination and racial segregation remain as yet effectively untackled in these countries. To date, Western European governments have also not yet ensured that their social inclusion policies extend to the weakest in society, and many Roma remain excluded in Western Europe. The renewed outbreak in March 2004 of ethnic violence targeting persons regarded as "Gypsies" in Kosovo serves as a powerful indicator of how precarious the lives of many Roma and others remain throughout southeastern Europe and the threat of raw violence under which many today live. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, nascent Roma rights efforts need the full support of all stakeholders, if Roma in those countries are to realise their fundamental human rights.

International Roma Day 2004 provides an opportunity to all governments in Europe to affirm that in the coming period, they intend to devote time, energy, resources and expertise sufficient to ensure that all Roma in Europe enjoy full inclusion in practice in the societies in which they live.

Further information on European Union social inclusion policies are available on the website of the European Union at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/soc-prot/soc-incl/index_en.htm.

Further information on European Roma Rights Center efforts to ensure the social inclusion of Roma in Europe is available by contacting the offices of the ERRC: office@errc.org.