The European Parliament, meeting in plenary session in Strasbourg, debated the marginalisation of the Roma community on Tuesday 5 October. A motion for a resolution, brought by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL), was approved the following day with 486 votes in favour, 109 against and 38 abstentions.
Eradicating poverty
The motion for a resolution, which was discussed in the presence of the European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, and the Czech minister for European affairs, Mikuláš Bek, makes a series of recommendations. They denounce the marginalisation of the Roma community in unhealthy settlements and their exclusion from the labour market and the education system.
With inflation threatening the most vulnerable, Estrella Durá Ferrandis (S&D, Spanish) called for “adequate investment” and “the urgent implementation of the minimum wage directive, an increase in the budget for the European Child Guarantee, increased efforts on minimum income schemes and EU support for adequate housing”.
Miriam Lexmann (EPP, Slovakian) stressed the importance of taking into account the “structural and bureaucratic” obstacles faced by local authorities. “I insisted that this report should also include a proposal that cities and municipalities should be able to use the funds not only to improve the situation of Roma living in settlements, but also that of the whole community”, she said.
Better use of European funds
Furthermore, the report denounces the inefficient and partial mobilisation of European funds by the Member States, due to a lack of political will, administrative obstacles or discrimination. “We have a strategy, we have frameworks, we have recommendations, we even have money [...], but the Member States are not using the resources fully”, summarised Dragoş Pîslaru (Renew Europe, Romanian). “Relying on recommendations for Member States is not the right way to make progress”.
Helena Dalli recognises that the national strategic frameworks foreseen in the EU Roma Support Plan 2020-2030 are essential. “The Commission is currently evaluating these national frameworks and will publish its assessment by the end of the year. From 2023 onwards, Member States will report on the implementation of their national frameworks every 2 years”, she added.
Although the report was generally welcomed, it was not unanimously supported. The ID group had proposed a series of amendments and ultimately rejected the whole text. Meanwhile, Elżbieta Rafalska (ECR) acknowledged that the text “addresses urgent issues and rightly calls for the improvement of the conditions [for the Roma community]”, but objected to its call for the swift implementation of the budget conditionality system, deeming that the EU “wrongly accuses some states of segregation and discrimination against Roma fleeing Ukraine”.
See the motion for a resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/3f3 (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)