Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-04-05-Speech-2-370-000"
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"en.20110405.18.2-370-000"2
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"Madam President, it is of course good news that we now have a concrete European framework that is going to place an obligation on every Member State to present its national Roma integration strategy. Between now and the end of the year, the Commission will assess these strategies and then in roughly one year’s time we will need to debate the issue again. Today, we are therefore in effect setting out a road map which should allow parliamentarians, public bodies and civil society to exercise ongoing, extreme vigilance in the very important areas you have mentioned.
I note that the Commission communication takes on board some of the points we set out in the parliamentary report. I am talking for instance about the involvement of the Fundamental Rights Agency in the assessment of the strategies. I believe the Agency has proven its competence in this area. I am also talking about developing cooperation with the Council of Europe on training mediators from the Roma community. This is an important strategic factor for the success of the projects at all levels, as is the attention devoted to Roma who are nationals of third countries and the enlargement aspect, which is taken into consideration in this report. Lastly, I think that establishing common indicators to support the monitoring system is very much to be welcomed.
Nevertheless, I must emphasise certain failings in this communication. I believe it is not sufficiently strong and insistent in its reference to the necessary participation of Roma at all levels, that is to say at the levels of preparing the projects, implementing the projects and evaluating them. The communication talks about information and consultation, but the involvement of the Roma community itself is vital. There is ample experience to prove this, because there have actually been good experiences in Europe as well. I find this a weakness in the communication.
A second weakness in the communication is that it deals with the issue of non-discrimination as a cross-cutting theme in each of the four areas. However, I think it is very important, or would have been very important, to have a special paragraph devoted to combating discrimination and violence and to access to justice for the Roma. This anti-discrimination, fundamental rights, access to justice component is not included as a specific component in its own right. I find this another weakness in the Commission document.
I think we also talked about the subject of mediators, a programme that was launched by the Council of Europe. It is good that it is mentioned in this communication. We could have mentioned, and you also could have mentioned the guidelines that have already been drawn up by the Council of Europe, so that we do not somehow end up with two strategies, or two types of framework for assessing the national strategies. I feel this would have been a plus in this communication.
Finally, I think that the Commission’s work is not yet finished, and that the task force should continue its work, in order to ensure that Member States are constantly aware of the pressure on them from the Commission, civil society and local bodies to actually implement these guidelines."@en1
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