Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-056"
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"en.20050427.8.3-056"2
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".
Mr President, with the enlargement of the European Union, the number of Roma citizens has increased from 7 million to 9 million. Since enlargement is an ongoing process, in future the EU will host up to 12 or 15 million Roma. For thousands of years the Roma have been living in diaspora, but being united in the EU they become our fellow citizens. The European Union means an end to years of war and the beginning of cooperation. But how can we cooperate when people are excluded?
Mostly, the Roma issue is connected with unemployment and a lack of education, healthcare and housing. However, the core issue is racism against Roma, more specifically anti-Gypsyism or Roma-phobia. Can we accept a situation where millions of our fellow citizens lack basic human rights and suffer from police harassment, where thousands of school children remain illiterate and the unemployment rate exceeds 70%, where attempts are made at ethnic cleansing by poisoning people and trafficking in women and children, including in western EU countries, which, contrary to the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees, also expel Roma refugees?
The Roma also face a lack of political participation, as a result of which there are not enough Roma representatives to draw attention to their issues. Today’s practice is not only a human tragedy: the Roma have been turned into a political tool. What happened to the millions of dollars and euros donated by the US and the EU to Eastern European countries for Roma projects?
Structures set up for the purpose of helping the cause of the Roma often use this cause as a pretext. In reality most of the money is spent on salaries, trips and on buying citizens, administrators and politicians. This process is defined as corruption, but actually it is manipulation. There are people in this world who do not want a dynamic Europe; they practice a policy of divide and rule by maintaining poverty and establishing control over Eastern European countries. The Roma, Europe’s largest and most vulnerable minority, are, against their will, victims and participants in this global game.
It is therefore also necessary from a purely political point of view to reinforce the Roma population. Their political participation in elections is important. We have to target Roma as voters and as candidates at all political levels. The Roma-to-Roma approach, as developed by the OSCE, is another effective way of consolidating the Roma’s position. All European organisations should start hiring Roma for Roma and non-Roma related jobs – I have a Roma assistant.
Anti-Gypsyism is a shame and a threat to the EU."@en1
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