Legal Background  

According to the article 29 of the Treaty, the Union ’s objective is to provide citizens with a high level of safety within an area of freedom, security and justice by developing common action among the Member States in the fields of police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters and by preventing and combating racism and xenophobia.

Article 3(2) of the Treaty requires the Community to aim to eliminate inequalities and actively to promote equality between men and women in all its activities and thus ensure the integration of the dimension of equality between men and women in all Community policies.

The Communication on the Year of Equal Opportunities emphasizes the fact that Roma are the “most disadvantaged ethnic minority group in Europe ” and writes about the “significant barriers in employment and education” they face.

The Communication writes “disadvantages experienced by some communities e.g the Roma are so wide-scale and embedded in the structure of society that positive action may be necessary to remedy the nature of their exclusion.”

In summary we have arguably a legal background for prevention, active measures and positive actions tackling anti-Gypsyism which together with the incentive measures of the Race Directive (43/2000/EC) and a very well developed European Employment strategy (see article here) would seem enough to facilitate a good development of Roma communities in the EU.

But this is far from what the situation is like in the Roma communities.

In charge with the implementation of the EU Treaties, Strategies and documents is the European Commission which up to now tried some things but done not much besides words in improving the situation of Roma. There is a clear discrepancy between the nice rhetoric of high level EU officials and what happens in the Roma ghettos and communities and the measures taken has failed to produce the results expected.

The Commission does try to address the issues but still sticks to a service provider approach which arguably does increase dependency and doesn't help the real empowering of Roma and development in their communities.