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| ROMA AND MINORITY RIGHTS IN ROMANIA 08/04/2010 |
| (2010-04-08) |
| Last updated: 2010-04-09 13:06 EET |
Since the mid-1990s, long before being admitted into the European Union, Romania has been acknowledged as a regional model of compliance with respect to ethnic minority rights.
Regardless of their demographic and electoral percentage, all the 18 ethnic minorities recognised by the Romanian State, from Ukrainians, Serbs or Italians to Turks, are each assigned a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. In an increasingly steady ratio between Power and Opposition in Parliament, the votes of the Deputies representing ethnic minority groups have lately become instrumental in putting in power or bringing down governments.
Furthermore, the political representatives of the largest minority in Romania, that of the 1.6 million ethnic Hungarians, who control about seven per cent of the seats in Parliament, has been a junior partner in all coalition governments since 1996. In short, as foreign experts admit as well, minorities in Romania do benefit from a status that Romanian communities in neighbouring states, such as Ukraine, Serbia or Hungary, could only dream about for the past 20 years.
The only exception from this rule seems to be the Roma community. Indeed, last month the US State Department noted, in its annual international human rights report, that the Roma in Romania are still subject to discrimination, whose forms range from the lack of employment opportunities to excessively harsh treatment by the police.
In turn, sociological surveys reveal that the ethnic group the most disliked by the Romanian majority are the Roma, who are perceived as having crime as their favourite pastime, and as loathing work and personal hygiene. Social scientists warn, however, that identifying the roots of this prevailing resentment is a complex task. The half a million Roma in Romania are subject to dramatic social polarisation.
At one end of the spectrum is the extreme poverty of families with many children, who don't go to school, suffer from cold and hunger, and are forced to learn, from their early childhood, from parents who have never had a job, how to survive at the margins of the law. At the other end of the scale is flashy wealth obtained by dubious means, palaces with dozens of huge rooms and cars worth tens of thousand Euros each.
The European Union itself admits that the Roma issue is continental in scope. With an estimated 10 million members, the Roma community is the largest ethnic minority in Europe, present in all the 27 member states. And, experts in Brussels admit, their lives are marked by persistent social exclusion.
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