Verheugen rules out Romanian adoption help

Date: 30/05/02

By David Cronin

THE European Commission has ruled out mediating for couples trying to adopt children from Romanian orphanages.

About €35 million in EU funding has already been allocated to help replace the old-style orphanages associated with the Ceaucescu era. But enlargement chief Günter Verheugen said: 'The Commission has neither the competence nor the intention to deal with individual cases.'

The German commissioner was replying to a query by Spanish centre-right MEP Encarnación Redondo Jiménez, who asked what the EU's executive could do to overcome the moratorium on adoptions imposed by the Romanian authorities in June 2001.

'The number of international adoption request procedures in hand runs into the thousands [with] over a thousand from Spain alone,' wrote the MEP.

'Following the visits of the French and US presidents and the Spanish prime minister to Romania, these three countries managed to secure authorisation to bring some of the children concerned out of the country. But there are huge numbers of procedures still blocked and of children awaiting adoption.'

Verheugen noted the Commission had welcomed the moratorium in its 2001 annual report on the progress Romania has made on meeting the requirements for EU membership.

A year previously the Commission had cited evidence that the law on adoptions was being contravened through several cases of trafficking in children. It recommends that legislation should be introduced to combat abuses in the system before ending the freeze on international adoptions. It also wants Bucharest to 'develop the appropriate administrative structures and capacity in order to ensure that adoption decisions are made exclusively in the best interest of the child'.

The European Commission has ruled out mediating for couples trying to adopt children from Romanian orphanages.