Hungarian EU Presidency to Focus on Roma Issues

Romanian Roma pictured arriving from France at the Bucharest Airport in August. Photo by EPA/BGNES

The upcoming Hungarian EU Presidency will pay special attention to the Roma minority by using resources from the "Europe 2020" strategy, the Hungarian Ambassador to the EU, Peter Gyorkos, said, EurActiv informed.

Three points of the strategy – unemployment, early school leaving and poverty – are relevant to the Roma issue, Gyorkos said at a public event organized by the European Policy Center (EPC).

He presented the priorities of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU, which starts on January 1, 2011 and continues for six months.

Gyorkos said that finding solutions for the many problems that Roma face in Europe is a "challenging exercise."

In his words, since the EU was determined to be closer to tis citizens, then the Europeans "should be closer to the 12 million citizens in Europe who are Roma."

The diplomat has pointed out that there are 700,000-800,000 Roma in Hungary currently, but they are "established," sedentary and "don't come up on the European agenda."

He added that the Hungarian EU Presidency will start with a European Commission paper on Roms in Europe and a progress report on Roma inclusion. Then, the Roma issue will come up at Council level in the second half of the presidency.

There will also be a Roma Platform meeting in Budapest and several Council meetings, where employment, social policy, education and youth being the most important ones.

In the European Parliament, the only Roma MEP is Hungarian Livia Jaroka, who took the initiative to transform this summer's scandal over the expulsion of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma from France into an opportunity.

Jaroka is currently working on a blueprint for a legislative proposal to be presented under the Hungarian EU Presidency on funding the Roma communities.

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