Just past midway through Europe’s “Decade of Roma Inclusion” and on the heels of a year which saw controversial deportation of Roma from France and other examples of backlash against the group in the continent, Professor Liebich gave a public presentation at the Graduate Institute last Thursday, taking stock of what is being done to alleviate the group’s socioecononmic problems and how effective it has been.
Author of an article entitled Roma Nation? and former chairman of an advisory group of the DiploFoundation that produced the book Roma Diplomacy, Professor Liebich was also commissioned in 2010 by the European Commission along with two colleagues to outline best practices in tackling Roma issues.
In his presentation, Professor Liebich gave details of the numerous initiatives European organisations are carrying out to ease Roma plight including those by the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and most substantially, the European Union. Providing a comparison of the scale of the programmes, he pointed out that the OSCE annual budget is EUR 150 million per year while the European Union has a EUR 123 billion yearly budget making the EU the most important of these entities as far as Roma are concerned.
Despite all of its efforts to integrate Roma into society and improve their economic well-being, Europe has not achieved the results it has hoped for, according to Professor Liebich. He pointed out that one of the main factors hindering progress is the EU’s bureaucracy and structure. The EU does not favour the creation of programmes specifically or exclusively for Roma. It has programmes that address many of their problems like housing or schooling but these are also for all other European citizens. This practice of mainstreaming vs. targeting, as Professor Liebich described it, is a key factor why results of efforts to improve Roma living conditions have produced very modest successes to date.
As a result, tracing how much money goes to directly addressing Roma issues is a challenge as is compiling statistical data on the group. “The EU is uncertain whether the Roma are an ethnic minority or a deprived social group; they are probably a bit of both”. The EU avoids minority issues because so far these have been considered to belong to national politics which the EU does not deal with, he said.
Professor Liebich also provided other acknowledged factors which have led to less than satisfactory outcomes such as widespread prejudice and lack of Roma involvement. Speaking of unacknowledged factors that have hampered results, he said that discrimination against the group is ingrained in European societies and that Roma traditionally have a deep distrust of outsiders. Even Roma who try to help with the group’s integration into housing and schooling regimes by acting as representatives or go betweens often lose their authority within their own community, he said.
Also hindering attempts to develop solutions to Roma problems has been the fact that the term “Roma” itself is a generalisation and does not take into account that the people concerned do not have a common language, lifestyle or religion.
Professor Liebich said that prominent Roma activists have defined the group as a transnational minority or a non-territorial nation. “In either case, the EU cannot handle this; it challenges its very traditional, nation-state based structure.”
Until it finds the right balance between policies of redistribution and recognition as well between practices of targeting and mainstreaming, Europe’s investments in areas of concern to the Roma will not yield proportional returns, he concluded.
Institute faculty member in the International History and Politics unit since 1989, Professor Andre Liebich is an expert in minority issues, statehood and nationalism as well as post-communist Eastern Europe. He also carries out research for the EU Democracy Observatory on Citizenship at the European University Institute and for the European Centre for Minority Issues.