Romania Roma migration. Solution: taking responsibility

January 1, 2001

Comment: The article is a description of a Conference entitled “Roma migration within the European Community, between integration and criminality”, held at the Gospel Academy in Sibiu on Tuesday, the 17th of March 2009. While even the title is quite provocative, most speakers at the conference ignored their written contributions and talked freely and openly about Romanian Roma in Europe.

President of the Roma Democratic Union of Alba-Iula for example posed the rhetorical question: “Why aren’t there any discussions about the Roma community in the Czech Republic or about the Bulgarians in Italy? Why is it that just the Roma community from Romania are considered criminals in Italy?”, while the former representative of the Roma community at OSCE raised a different kind of question of how to differentiate between a “good” and a “bad” Roma? Another speaker stated that in Italy, only the Roma traditionally dressed and the ones who beg in the streets are spotted while others may remain invisible, driving luxury cars and living in expensive mansions.

Clearly the conference speakers were pre-occupied with the recent events in Italy regarding Romanian Roma and that was reflected in the conference title as well, but hardly any discussion covered the issue of integrating Roma in Romania, addressing the poverty, access to education and other services and the discrimination they face – factors that drive them out of Romania in the first place.

The original article (in Romanian) can be read here.