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EU to strictly monitor national Roma programmes: Reding

08 April 2011, 14:20 CET
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(BUDAPEST) - Europe wants to keep a closer eye on how member states run their future Roma programmes, European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding warned at a Roma forum here Friday.

"If the member states are ready to establish their Roma strategies, we'll monitor the implementation. If they are not willing to act, I can tell you some of our member states will run into a big problem," Reding said on International Roma Day.

"We cannot afford all those numbers of young Roma people" without education or jobs, she added.

"There is a strong young population which should gain from the EU society."

The average age is 25 among the Roma minority -- who usually live in poverty, with substandard housing and high unemployment rates -- as opposed to an EU average of 40, Reding noted.

The European Commission presented on Tuesday a new Roma strategy that focuses on improving education, housing, work and health among the 12 million European Roma, and which current EU chair Hungary is hoping that EU leaders will approve on June 24.

If implemented, the Roma programme would have its first results in a couple of years but "it will take 40-50 years until the unequal field caused by injustice will cease to be," said Hungarian MEP Livia Jaroka, author of a recent European Parliament report calling for Roma action.

The Commission's plan was criticised by Roma organisations for failing to tackle widespread anti-gypsy sentiments in Europe.

"We have to say clearly that social inclusion will never work in the existing climate of anti-gypsyism," said Valeriu Nicolae of the Policy Centre for Roma and Minorities, which showed its discontent with the Commission plan by holding up dozens of red cards during Reding's speech.

"This should have been a fundamental part of the communication and it is not," he said.

Some 26.5 billion euros ($38.2 billion) in EU funds are made available for Roma projects every year, but in 2010, only 30 percent were used, Reding also noted.

"Seventy percent of the money was not utilised. In other words, nothing happened," she fumed, describing France's deportation of Roma last summer as a pivotal moment in efforts to integrate the Roma community in Europe.

"What happened last summer in France was a wake-up call, it was at that moment that we understood we cannot continue. Enough is enough," she added.


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