Deplorable living conditions, bleak prospects at school and at work: the situation of Europe’s Roma communities has not improved despite EU targets to facilitate their integration, the bloc’s rights agency said in a report on Tuesday.
Across Europe, Roma “continue to face shocking levels of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination,” said Michael O’Flaherty, director of the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
National policymakers should “focus resources and efforts on addressing the unbearable emergency,” he added in a press release.
The FRA report, based on almost 8,500 interviews with Roma in ten European countries, finds that progress on Roma integration has been “too little and too slow” since the last survey six years ago.
According to the results, 80 percent of Roma are still “at risk of poverty” compared to an EU average of 17 percent. This number has remained unchanged since the 2016 study.
The figures on education are remarkable: 71 percent of young Roma aged 18-24 leave the education system early, compared to just 10 percent of the total EU population.
Among school attendees, many children between the ages of six and 15 are in a special school – 52 percent compared to 44 percent in 2016 – especially in Slovakia and Bulgaria.
– Damp and dark housing –
“Many countries are still not reaching the milestones set out in the EU’s 10-year plan for Roma,” which runs to 2030, according to FRA.
It warned of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and rising inflation, which could further hurt Roma communities in particular.
About 43 percent of Roma surveyed were employed, well below the European average of 72 percent for 2020.
The study also found that Roma women have a life expectancy of 71 years and men 67 years, compared to 82 and 76 years for the EU population as a whole, respectively.
More than half of Roma respondents for the survey live in damp and dark homes or without adequate sanitation, compared with 61 percent in 2016, while 22 percent have no running water, compared with 30 percent.
While lamenting the lack of “real improvements in the fight against discrimination”, the survey results point to “a positive development in the fight against hate-motivated harassment and violence”.
The report is based on a survey conducted by FRA in 2021 among Roma in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, as well as North Macedonia and Serbia, both aspiring to join the EU.
In Bulgaria and Slovakia, data were collected by the national authorities with the support of the FRA.
