BRUSSELS: Anger over France`s expulsion of Roma migrants has blown the lid off Europe`s failure to integrate its biggest minority group, fueling calls for sweeping action to end decades of neglect.
The French crackdown escalated into a fierce political row which hijacked a summit of European leaders last week after a top European Union official likened the measures to World War II deportations.
Rights groups lamented that the bickering failed to translate into any European-wide strategy to improve the lot of a community of 10 million people that suffers from abject poverty, little schooling and age-old prejudices.
"There is no European strategy," said Ivan Ivanov, executive director of the Brussels-based European Roma Information Office. "The crisis in France has proven once again that there is an urgent need for a strategy."
"Enough evidence shows this is the most disadvantaged community, these are the poorest people in Europe, these are the most discriminated against people in the European Union," he said.
The integration of the Roma community had not been a headline grabber until the political dust-up over France`s controversial measures.
A European summit dedicated to the Roma issue in April attracted just a handful of ministers from France, Spain and Finland attending the meeting in Cordoba, Spain.
Only 12 of the EU`s 27 member states used money from the European Social Fund to support vulnerable groups including the Roma population, with a total budget of 17.5 billion euros (23 billion dollars) between 2007-2013.
Improving access to education has been identified as a key to raising their standard of living. In Slovakia, the Roma represent 10 percent of the population but make up 60 percent of the pupils in special schools, according to Amnesty International.
A World Bank study says the failure of integrating Roma costs Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Serbia more than 7.5 billion euros a year.
"The money is available, but is not being used to solve the problem," EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding told the European parliament this month.
"Why is this? Well, in my personal opinion it might be because it is not very popular in our member states to take EU money and invest it in the Roma community," she said.
Reding was in the eye of the storm last week after she made a link between the French deportation of more than 1,700 Roma since July, and World War II -- a comparison she later regretted.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy angrily rejected the link, vowing to continue clearing illegal camps despite the threat of legal action from the European Commission over concerns that the measures target Roma specifically.
Sarkozy says France has the right to expel people who overstay their welcome. Paris insists that the solution to the problem is to improve the integration of Roma minorities in their home countries.
Romania, home to nearly two million Roma, and Bulgaria, with around 800,000, have the biggest Roma populations in the EU, which they joined in 2007.
Roma groups from the former communist bloc have taken advantage of the EU`s freedom of movement policies to migrate in search of a better life in wealthier Western Europe.
But there is growing hostility to immigration in a continent recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"Everywhere in Europe, governments are using xenophobia because they don`t have enough answers to the economic crisis," Guy Verhofstadt, head of the Liberal bloc in the European parliament, told RFI radio.
Shada Islam, an expert on integration of minorities at the European Policy Center think-tank, lamented that the Roma issue degenerated into a "childish debate" marred by "cliches and prejudice not based on reality."
"We must deal with the problem of security and criminality that the Roma may pose but by tackling its root: (lack of) education, unemployment," she said. "We need an intelligent debate."
BDST: 0854 HRS, September 19, 2010
