The issue of the Roma communities has to be solved in all Romania

2013-12-10

At its plenary session on Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted a report regarding the improvement of the situation of Roma women.  The document addressed some of the shortcomings of the framework strategy.


The report initiated by FIDESZ MEP Lívia Járóka proposes fighting against poverty among children, providing more accessible daycare facilities and programmes that promote the continuation of interrupted studies and the use of vocational training as tools to improve the situation of disadvantaged, underage Roma mothers and early school leavers among young Roma girls.

In the course of the report’s debate, RMDSZ MEP Csaba Sógor pointed out that there are severe deficiencies in the implementation of Roma integration strategies in the member states.  „We cannot expect short term positive results, we need to lay down the basis of future successes now” – stressed the MEP.

In the MEP’s opinion, the existence of financial resources is not even the main issue: we can often see that the funds do not reach the beneficiaries and the monitoring process of the programmes shows severe irregularities.

„We cannot concentrate exclusively on the communities living on the outskirts of big cities, we have to solve the problems of Roma communities in the rural areas as well. We can often hear misguided opinions that we should stop focusing on the northern and central region of the country as the real problems can be found in the east and south. We must state that this is simply not true. In the case of Romania, we need to address the problems of the Roma communities living in hard social circumstances in the whole country”, summed up the RMDSZ MEP.