Call for Roma to have seat in Parliament

Date: 01/08/01

AT LEAST one seat should be reserved in the post-enlargement European Parliament for representatives of Europe's gypsy community, say campaigners.

The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) is arguing that Belgium's EU presidency should propose measures to boost the level of political participation by gypsies.

ERRC spokesman Claude Cahn pointed out that the number of deputies of Roma origin in the national parliament of Hungary - where an estimated 5 of the population belong to that ethnic group - has fallen from three at the beginning of the 1990s to none at the moment.

The situation is mirrored in other states applying for EU membership: Slovakia has no Roma members of parliament, while the Czech Republic only has one. Romania is unique among the applicant states in insisting that a seat must be held for a Roma representative. "International bodies are a good place to start overcoming the exclusion of the Roma," said Cahn. "Having a reserved seat in the European Parliament would not be the be-all and the end-all. But the difference between zero and one is very significant."

The International Romany Union (IRU) estimates there could be 10 million Roma in Europe and is campaigning for the EU to recognise them as belonging to a stateless nation, thus guaranteeing Roma a voice in the Union's institutions. "We need to stop calling the Roma a minority and look at them instead as a nation," said spokesman Paolo Pietrosanti.

A Czech human rights group is to monitor UK immigration officials at Prague Airport after claims of racist controls on Roma attempting to board flights to Britain. The UK team was 'exposed' when a light-skinned woman and dark-skinned man, working undercover for Czech TV, sought to pass their checks. The man was stopped, while the woman was allowed through.

At least one seat should be reserved in the post-enlargement European Parliament for representatives of Europe's gypsy community, say campaigners.