Ethnic problems rife amongst candidates for EU membership

Date: 11/06/1998

By Mark Turner

THE recent decision by the Czech town of Usti nad Labem to wall in its Roma community is the latest instance of serious ethnic tensions in the central and eastern European countries bidding for EU membership.

Recent events have prompted some European Commission officials to ask whether it might not be time for the Union to use enlargement as a lever for social change, although that is far from official policy.

While western Europe is no haven of multi-ethnic harmony, and experts are keen not to draw a qualitative distinction between East and West, it does have a 40-year history of dealing with difference.

By contrast, the East's old Communist governments tended to pretend that diversity did not exist, and the region is only now learning how to tackle minority issues constructively.

"The repression of difference under the political regimes in the post-war period led to a veritable explosion of claims and counter-claims from minority groups, all seeking to re-establish their identity and reclaim their heritage in the years after 1989," says Belgium's Baudouin Foundation, which, together with the Soros Foundation, funds inter-ethnic friendship programmes in the East.

"Whilst this renaissance of minority identity may be perceived as a positive contribution to European culture, it has led to conflict, tension and, in the most extreme cases, the outbreak of violent hostilities."

These tensions can perhaps be divided into two broad categories: xenophobia and racism.

The former arose as newly independent countries asserted their identity with unprecedented vigour. Where substantial minorities from one country lived in another, this could sometimes have brutal consequences.

The most violent manifestation of this was in former Yugoslavia, but rivalries and jealousies exist between almost all the central and eastern European peoples, whether they be Hungarians and Romanians, Czechs and Slovaks or Austrians and Slovenians.

Years of Soviet rule also led to new anomalies, such as the large Russian minorities which were sent to live in the Baltics and are now fighting for civil rights.

The second problem, racism, is in many ways more insidious, appealing to fear of the stranger within.

The Roma people suffer systematic discrimination in education, housing and access to social services throughout the region. Although this is not confined to the East (discrimination is also rampant in Greece, Italy, Spain and elsewhere), the problem is more severe as so many of Europe's 10 million or more Roma live in the region.

"We believe that the Roma are the most deprived ethnic group of Europe," says Dimitrina Petrova of the Roma Rights centre in Hungary. "Everywhere their human rights are threatened and we have seen a rise in racist violence."

Anti-semitism remains a problem amongst certain sections of Polish society and racism against blacks, of whom there are relatively few in the region, is also growing.

Taye Kevede, of the Martin Luther King organisation in Hungary, fears that an increasingly right-wing political agenda could exacerbate the serious problems already faced by black students, refugees and tourists.

Nor is this an issue which is set to disappear. Immigration is rising in response to growing regional wealth, evidenced by the increasing number of Asians in Poland and the Baltic states, and as the East acquires a reputation as a gateway to western Europe.

But the Baudouin Foundation warns that the administrative culture in many central and eastern European countries has been slow to react to changing needs.

"With the restructuring of economies and the necessity of political reforms, governments have had very little in the way of resources to support the growing demands from their minorities," it says.

The Strasbourg-based Council of Europe's commission on racism and intolerance (ECRI) has pointed, in a series of legal reports, to a lack of civil and administrative tools in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary to prevent discrimination in employment and housing, even though criminal laws exist.

For the time being, however, the EU can do little. The internal battle which erupted over proposals to criminalise denial of the Holocaust across the Union demonstrates how sensitive these issue are even within existing member states.

The Union funds educational projects in central and eastern Europe through the Phare 'Lien' programme and some human rights initiatives, and made vague comments about the Roma in its pre-accession partnerships. But overall, the problem has yet to be addressed.

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