Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-01-Speech-4-028"
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"en.20060601.4.4-028"2
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"Mr President, this is the second time that we are conducting a debate in a plenary session of the European Parliament specifically focused on the situation of the Roma. On the first occasion, one year ago, the House voted with a large majority in favour of the five-party agreement concerning the situation of the Roma, the first EP document addressing exclusively the problems of the Roma people. At that time, we also formulated certain proposals. This had been preceded by the much earlier comprehensive report of the Commission on the situation of European Roma. Their situation has not changed much, and has, in fact, deteriorated in many cases since the publication of these important documents, just like before, over the past decades.
The Roma are facing significant difficulties in the area of employment, because the unemployment rate in some European regions with a high Roma population reaches 100%. Instead of facing the problem of reconciling family and work, the average Roma woman must fight every day to put food on the table without having a job, waiting for benefit and at the mercy of loan sharks. It is true that in many cases unemployment is a consequence of low level, segregated education, but most often it is a result of the fact that when the Roma go to a job interview, they are automatically turned down because of the colour of their skin.
It is particularly important to emphasise this, because we are in the process of making sure that Europe becomes even more competitive at a time when the population of the continent is aging rapidly. It seems logical to take into account the youngest and largest ethnic minority of Europe, especially in view of the reports stating that by 2050, in some Member States the proportion of the active Roma population will be higher than that of the active non-Roma.
The countless documents, studies and publications describing the situation of the Roma, including my report, were not meant to end up on shelves or filing cabinets, and they are not advertising material intended to propagate the issue. These documents, including the public hearing and expert report associated with my report, present a shocking picture. Politicians have a huge responsibility, because a logical question arises: how can a unified Europe deal with the challenges posed by the integration and globalisation of immigrants arriving in Europe, if it sweeps under the carpet the Roma – who have been living in Europe since the 14th century – and their problems?
The efforts of governments in this area are mainly exhausted in the formulation of impressive action plans, but the governments neither implement real structural changes nor do they create the funds required for reforms. Also, they do not enforce penalties for the violation of the law to the required extent, and do not supervise the so-called Roma projects appropriately. The European Union does not undertake any of these tasks, either.
Over the past seventeen years, the European Union has spent EUR 750 million on the Roma. More than one third of these funds have been drawn as earmarked resources, specifically for Roma programmes.
More than half of the Roma children can still only study in segregated gipsy classes. In Hungary, which is probably the only EU Member State advocating a progressive Roma education policy, the number of segregated children has continued to grow in the past years, in spite of desegregation efforts. More than two thirds of the active Roma population are unemployed in the long term. We still have the isolated gipsy settlements, the ghettos, the hopelessness, the dependence on benefit and the increasing anti-Roma attitude, leading to the social exclusion of further generations.
However, an important development in the past years may be that the Roma civil society has become stronger, and I am glad that the Commission finds it important to support it. Following in the footsteps of the civil organisations who have worked on this for two decades, it has taken us almost two years of hard work to ensure that more and more issues affecting the Roma are brought to the attention of the European Parliament in the course of our work.
The report concerning Roma women, which I have drafted, and which we are debating today, could not have become a strong professional document without the contribution of civil organisations, such as the Open Society Institute, the European Roma Rights Centre and other organisations and specialists with whom we liaise in the course of our day-to-day work. It is important that the number of organisations dealing with the Roma increases each year, and that they become the driving force of the enforcement of the rights of Roma throughout Europe.
However, experience has shown that this is nowhere near sufficient to bring any significant changes in the life of the Roma. A few weeks ago a kindergarten teacher said that the reason why Roma children were not allowed to attend the kindergarten was that they were muddy. The streets of the Roma settlement from where the parents would like to take their children to kindergarten have never been gravelled, and road paving is not even included in the medium-term plans of the town. The floods have washed away the settlement three times, depositing several hundred kilograms of waste between the houses, because, like thousands of other gipsy settlements, this settlement, too, is adjacent to the waste disposal site of the town.
The day before my visit, an elderly Roma woman became brain dead because it took the Roma twenty minutes to push the ambulance out of their settlement. At the same settlement, a mud hut collapsed on a family with six children one night in January, and they have been living with their neighbours since then. Twelve people live in one room.
I often see similar situations in old Member States, too, not only in Eastern Europe. The authorities always give the same answer: neither the local government, nor the Roma leaders are able to help. This is the reality that a Roma woman must face every day in the Europe of the twenty-five. Racial discrimination exacerbates the existing disadvantaged situation, and makes our everyday life difficult through the increasing, open and implied anti-Roma attitude throughout Europe."@en1
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