THE EUROPEAN Union was yesterday accused of “turning a blind eye” as countries across Europe carried out a wave of expulsions and introduced new legislation targeting the Roma.
Human rights groups criticised the EU for failing to address the real issues driving Europe’s largest ethnic minority to migrate in the first place and for choosing not to upbraid countries for breaking both domestic and EU laws in their treatment of them.
The criticism came after France announced it would round up and expel illegal Roma immigrants and destroy hundreds of encampments. Elsewhere, it emerged the city of Copenhagen had requested Danish government assistance to deport up to 400 Roma, and that Swedish police had expelled Roma in breach of its own and EU laws.
In Belgium, a caravan of 700 Roma has been chased out of Flanders and forced to set up camp in French-speaking Wallonia in the south. Italy, which in 2008 declared a state of emergency due to Roma and evicted thousands, is continuing with that policy.
Germany is in the process of repatriating thousands of Roma children and adolescents to Kosovo, despite warnings they will face discrimination, appalling living conditions, lack of access to education as well as language problems, because many of them were born in Germany and do not speak Serbian or Albanian.
In eastern European EU countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, accounts are rife of widespread discrimination against Roma, including physical attacks.
Amnesty International said the EU had “turned a blind eye” to what it called a “serious breach of human rights” towards Europe’s Roma, estimated at 16 million.
The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre called on the EU to be “much more forthright” in pointing out to member states “the clear requirements of the free movement law”.
The campaign groups were responding to the European Commission’s insistence the issue was for individual states to handle.
French president Nicholas Sarkozy was this week accused of a “xenophobic” and “discriminatory” crackdown on the country’s 400,000 Travellers, Gypsies and Roma. Campaign groups have accused Brussels of cowardice when it comes to the Roma. – (Guardian service)