Opinion
On October 8, 2009 the European Commission published an
article entitled “Supporting Roma Inclusion,” signed by Belinda Pyke.
The article represents a positive step in that it shows some willingness
on the part of the Commission to engage in a critical constructive
dialogue about Roma Inclusion. It provides pertinent responses to some
issues raised by myself and Bernard Rorke – the director of Roma
Initiatives office, in our previous article: “The
Rethoric may have improved, but violence is on the rise”
Here I would like to respond to some of the points
raised in the EC article. The article starts with the subtitle: ”The
Commission is working hard to protect minority groups.”
As the article focuses on Roma inclusion, let’s look at some facts and figures regarding the
Commission and Roma:
At least 8 million Roma live in the European Union.
This is a lot of people. Consider that almost half of the 27 EU
countries have populations of less than 8 million, and even the smallest
countries in the EU, with less than 1 million people, have hundreds of
nationals employed in the European Commission and thousands of
bureaucrats in Brussels working on issues related to their countries’
affairs.
The European Commission has over 33.000 employees. Yet
no more than ten of those deal with Roma issues as a part of their work,
and no more than two work on Roma issues on an everyday basis.
None of the European Institutions employs any Roma.
None of the Cabinets of the European Commissioners (where people are
appointed rather than hired) include (or have included) any Roma or
employ Roma experts with the task of dealing specifically with
Roma-related problems. So far, no Roma have been temporarily or
permanently employed in the European Commission in Brussels. This makes
Roma the only non-represented European ethnic group within the European
Union’s institutions. It also makes the Commission’s recommendations
to Member States for incentive measures to employ Roma in representative
positions rather hard to sell.
The Commission has created a series of obscure informal
structures in recent years with limited results. A Roma Interservice
Group was established in 2004, chaired by the Director General of the DG
Employment and Social Affairs. This informal group was supposed to
ensure steerage within the Commission regarding Roma issues but there
are no visible results so far. It meets twice a year. Only once has the
Director General attended a meeting; meetings have been attended mainly
by the interns within European Commission. Similarly, the High Level
Group on Social and Labour Market Integration of Ethnic Minorities was
created to identify practical ways of using EU policies and programmes
to promote the integration of disadvantaged ethnic minorities, including
the Roma, into the labour market. Before ending its mandate, the group
produced a report. As with previous reports, its recommendations have
been largely ignored.
Returning to the EC article, Ms Pyke writes that the
report produced by the Commission and coordinated by her own DG: “demonstrated
that the EU has developed powerful tools and policy co-ordination
mechanisms to support national efforts to combat Roma discrimination and
promote Roma inclusion, notably the Race Directive and structural funds.”
Independent experts tend to disagree. NGOs working on
Roma issues, including the European Roma Policy Coalition, and six
independent reports contracted by the Commission since 2002 mention the
need for formal structures within the EC and suggest that in fact
existing mechanisms do not really work well.
The EC article presents a few examples of progress “...
a recent revision of the regulation on the European Regional Development
Fund is geared in particular to make it easier to tackle the housing
situation of very marginalised groups, such as Roma. And, in
mid-October, the Commission will hold events throughout Hungary to
demonstrate how structural funds can support Roma inclusion. More
examples of how Commission departments are working on Roma inclusion
will be given in a progress report in early 2010.”
In other words, examples of progress include a recent
revision of a regulation which briefly mentions Roma, and organising
some rather expensive seminars to demonstrate what the participants
already know about their own work.
These examples are simply not very impressive.
The article suggests that : “[the Platform] does not, and cannot, have the ambition to become a
new decision-making power or to assume responsibilities from member
states – or, for that matter, from the Commission.”
The role of the EU Roma Platform was described by the
EU Council as to ensure: “exchange
of good practice and experience on Roma inclusion”. The
description does not specify whether the Platform should be a formal or
informal mechanism, nor whether it should have decision-making power. I
don’t believe it is the job of the Commission to make assumptions
about the Council’s intentions. The Commission should ask the Council
for clarification in order to avoid misunderstandings. Moreover, the
Commission continues to ignore a
series of recent European Parliament resolutions calling for an EU Roma
Strategy and formal structures in the Commission.
Ms Pyke describes the Platform in positive terms:
“... the creation of a
framework in which member states can exchange policy experiences, with
input from the Commission and civil society, is novel and meaningful.”
A positive outlook is welcome. Still we need to
remember the history of this initiative. Back in 2004, then Director
General Odile Quintan of the DG Employment and Social Affairs said: “Yet
the social exclusion and discrimination of Roma communities are well
documented and despite all available legislative and financial
instruments remain often extreme…While the protection and
advancement of minorities are primarily the responsibility of Member
States, it is an urgent issue that also demands a response from the
European Union.” Following this statement, the Interservice Group on Roma was created. At
the time it was also considered novel and meaningful. Like the EU Roma
Platform, the Interservice Group was supposed to facilitate exchange of
experience among Member States and civil society using existing
mechanisms (structural funds, the Race Directive and the OMC)..
So why do we need the EU Roma
Platform? The un-written sub-text is that the Interservice Group failed.
Experts and many EC employees feel it failed because it was yet another
process and had no permanent secretariat capable of preparing the
meetings and assuming responsibility for its efficient functioning. Do
we have reason to expect a different fate for the EU Roma Platform?
The EU article also mentions
“the latest Roma Platform
meeting”. This might lead the reader to believe there has been a
series of meetings. In fact, the latest meeting was only the second
meeting since the Platform was announced more than a year ago. Indeed,
we cannot deny this small step forward, but considering the explosion of
extreme violent incidents against Roma in the last year, it is hardly
sufficient or significant progress.
The meeting itself merits some further discussion.
First, the Commission came up with a rather confusing definition of the
Platform which it sees as : “…
an open and flexible mechanism of
governance organised by the European Commission … [it] aims at
making existing policy processes
more coherent and prepares the ground for synergies… is not a formal
body but rather a process driven by participants.”
Second the topic for the meeting was selected without
any meaningful consultation with those supposed to “drive the process” of this “non-bodied
open and flexible mechanism of governance”.
The fact that Commissioner Spidla’s concluding
speech was distributed at the beginning of the meeting clearly
signalled how seriously the Commission took the consultations.
Furthermore, neither of the two meetings held so far
included a sufficient range of stakeholders to ensure relevant and
meaningful discussion. Roma were barely present and intergovernmental
and member states representatives were of low rank (with a few
exceptions), holding little or no executive powers.
Announced only two weeks in advance, poorly prepared,
and poorly attended, the second meeting of the European Platform was
considered by most who participated as a flop. Interventions only
repeated what everybody knew. There was no visible outcome aside from
the frustration of those who came to Brussels to attend.
I would like to conclude by looking at the most
interesting part of Ms Pyke’s article, where she responds to our call
“for a single ‘Roma unit' in the Commission, mirroring the
structures in the Council of Europe”. Ms Pyke writes that:
“it cannot be realistic to appoint some officials to be in charge of
‘all things Roma' when important issues would inevitably be decided by
departments in charge of the relevant policy areas. What we need is to
get ‘the Roma message' into those departments – and I believe we are
doing this.”
We agree. Yes Ms Pyke herself leads a unit named
Equality between Men/Women, Action against discrimination, Civil
Society. Presumably, the job of her unit is to get the “the message”
about gender equality and discrimination into departments
in charge of the relevant policy areas. There is a unit dealing
specifically with disabilities, which presumably has the same job. So
why not a similar unit for Roma issues: a formal coordinating body, well
staffed and budgeted, with a strong director willing and capable to
mainstream Roma issues within the Commission. By no means should this
unit be in charge of “all things
Roma”. It should simply work as other similar units already do
within the Commission. The
need for such a unit seems obvious.
The article ends: “We
have no illusions: there is a lot more to be done. But please do not
give the impression that the only thing that has changed is the
rhetoric. Progress has been and will be made.”
Yes, progress has been made and at times the Commission
has done admirable work. But we all agree that much remains to be done.
Further progress will result from focussing on remaining deficiencies
rather than on partial successes of the past.
