How the EC has been turning a blind eye to discrimination against the Roma

By Christina Vasilaki, our correspondent in Brussels

While Europeans are anxious to see what media will decide on Maria’s case, the blond, blue-eyes girl that was brutally taken away from her Greek Roma foster parents, Roma people in Europe still suffer from discriminative behaviors on all possible levels. The EU’s response seems to be once again inadequate.   

In 2000, the EU introduced the Race Equality Directive in an attempt to combat discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin. Thirteen years after, the EU Member States repeatedly violate Roma communities’ rights as regards housing conditions, access to water and sanitation, access to education.

However, according to a recent Amnesty International report on Roma situation in Europe, at the end of 2012 very few infringements proceedings on the Race Equality Directive were open (one each for Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and the UK). European Commission’s reluctance can be also seen in the way it handled France’s decision to forcibly evict Roma people who were originally from Romania and Bulgaria from French territory, back in August 2010. The Commission considered opening an infringement proceeding against France, “but by October, following an exchange of information with the French government, it dropped the idea”, says AI.

On Wednesday, Amnesty International released a report on Roma discrimination in Italy, accusing the country of having “double standards” in its housing policies. “Whilst non–Romani families that cannot afford a home are placed in dormitories and temporary housing centres, Roma are forced to live in segregated, sub-standard accommodation in authorized camps on the outskirts of Rome”, Amnesty International (AI) has found while visiting Italy, twice this year, in March and in June 2013.  In its recommendations, Amnesty International also includes a recommendation towards the European Commission to “start an infringement procedure against Italy for breach of the Race Equality Directive”.

Excluded from social housing

“I do not see this integration…The first non-Romani Italian is 3km away from here. Here we are surrounded by security video-cameras, watched 24 hours a day”, told Amnesty International a resident of Nuova Barbuta, interviewed in March 2013.

As AI reports, in Rome, the vast majority of residents of authorized camps have been transferred there in the course of the last 15 years following decisions of Rome municipal authorities, typically after a forced eviction. “There is no alternative solution to camps. Furthermore, there is no intention to create
preferential routes to give houses to Roma, discriminating against Italian citizens in the lists. They can forget about them”, told Amnesty International Sveva Belviso, former deputy-mayor of Rome in September 2012.

In a meeting with AI on Monday, the new administration of Rome indicated a willingness to repeal the discriminatory instruction preventing Roma in camps from accessing social housing.  “This would be an important step in the right direction”, writes AI in the Press Release, though according to the report, the practice of forced evictions is continuing under Rome’s new municipal administration. On 12 September 2013 Amnesty International and other NGOs witnessed the eviction of a settlement of about 120 Romani people, including scores of children, in Via Salviati, in the east of Rome.

Hate crimes

Apart from the evictions, discrimination against Roma on European territory can take different forms. For example, Roma people are very often victims of hatred violent attacks, while authorities rarely investigate on these crimes. According to media reports compiled by the European Roma Rights Centre, more than 120 serious violent attacks against Roma and their property occurred in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria between January 2008 and July 2012, including shootings, stabbings and arson attacks.

In general, as Amnesty International describes, “today Roma fall far below the national average. Eight out of 10 Roma in Europe live in households at risk of poverty, which results in severe material deprivation and ill health. Roma are less likely to complete upper-secondary education than non-Roma: for instance, only one in 10 Roma has completed it in France, Greece or Romania”.

Media approach

The AI report on Roma discrimination in Italy comes only a few days after the numerous media reports of child abductions by Roma in Greece and Ireland. Finally, it was proved that Maria, the blond girl that the Police brutally extorted from her family, presuming that she was abducted, was indeed the daughter of a Bulgarian Roma mother who abandoned her to the hands of the Greek Roma family due to economic problems. However, media in Greece and elsewhere seemed to have their own view on the topic: a presumption of guilt instead of a presumption of innocence.

The negative way media are profiling Roma people in Europe can contribute to a wider discriminative behavior against the minority group. “The recent debates over the children in Greece and Ireland reveal how entrenched discrimination towards Roma is, and how little society has questioned it. Instead of merely reflecting public attitudes, feeding and feeding off popular stereotypes, the media has a responsibility to challenge them. Member states should address the root causes of discrimination and the media should hold governments accountable for this”, told New Europe, Veronica Scognamiglio, Amnesty International’s European Campaign Coordinator on Discrimination. 

First published in NewEurope on October 31 2013.