10
million Roma, the population of a medium-sized EU country, are badly
underrepresented at a time when populist forces are trying to vilify
communities.
“The
panic about refugees and migrants has subsided a bit and the Roma
have become a scapegoat again,” said Bernard Rorke, of the European
Roma Rights Centre.
Populists
are stepping up a campaign to demonise them in many countries. In
France earlier this year, vigilante groups attacked
Roma people in
Paris after fake news reports alleged they were kidnapping children.
In Italy, one of the first acts of the far-right interior minister,
Matteo Salvini, last year was to call
for
the
creation of a register for Roma people. In Hungary, a newly
founded extreme-right party called
on its followers this week to fight “gypsy crime”. In central and
eastern European countries such as Slovakia, Hungary
and Romania, many Roma live in ghetto-like conditions, confined to
ramshackle settlements on the edge of towns and often excluded from
education and the jobs market. In Romania, where there are around 1
million or more Roma people, there is the self-perpetuating cycle of
segregation and discrimination has long been part of society. The
Hungarian government promotes itself as a model for Roma empowerment,
but critics say the government has merely shunted many people into
low-paid public works programmes, entrenching segregation.
Rorke
characterised the Hungarian attitude to the Roma community as “keep
them in poverty, keep them in public works schemes, and make sure
they’re not doing crystal meth and not getting pregnant”. This
reinforced segregation and discrimination rather than combatting it,
he said.
There
have been numerous national and European schemes and funding projects
aimed at Roma people, but without proper consultations they often
fail to make significant change.
“So
far, quite a lot of money has been spent, but with little effect. We
need to rely on public consultations and identify specific needs,
rather than find them in the imagination of politicians,” said the
Romanian EU official Ciprian Necula.
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