A guide to responsibility
A possible solution to the problems facing the Romani.
It has been nearly ten years since I first visited the Romani camps in eastern Slovakia, but the images remain vivid in my mind.
My visit, as part of a mission from the European Parliament budgetary control committee, was precipitated by media hysteria over the alleged improper use of European accession funds in Slovakia. We found no evidence of organised efforts to derail European funds. But it became plain to me that the Romani were living in an appalling situation, one that could have disastrous consequences in an enlarged Europe.
While many from behind the Iron Curtain were able to find jobs after the dissolution of the Soviet-style eastern European economies, Romani struggled. What I saw there reminded me of my travels in the interior of Mozambique in the early 1970s.
And yet there was a complete lack of political awareness of the consequences.
Unsurprisingly, Romani with European citizenship were among the first to explore the new freedom of movement provided by the EU’s enlargement. Soon their situation could no longer be confined to peripheral countries in the European Union.
The European Commission responded. In 2008, it inaugurated a biannual Roma summit. It then tried establishing a European platform for Roma integration, attempting to embrace several existing budgetary mechanisms into a broader strategy. Earlier this year, it multiplied its initiatives and actions to help the community’s integration, culminating several weeks ago with the creation of a European taskforce on the Romani population. This is a firm and courageous political commitment.
The Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, has also proposed new financial mechanisms. These, though, are rather vague; the Commission has yet to propose significant new financial mechanisms or reprogramming.
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After ten years on the Parliament’s budgets and budgetary control committees, I fully understand the Commission’s hesitation: it would be cumbersome, time-consuming and ultimately politically impossible to see any such proposal approved by the Council of Ministers, even in better economic circumstances.
But there is now a wholly justified feeling that business cannot continue as usual.
In my opinion, a possible solution can be seen in an apparently unrelated subject.
On 12 September, the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) produced a guideline entitled ‘Social Responsibility’, ISO 26000. The ISO concluded this agreement after ten years of intensive work and discussions and – for the first time in the ISO’s history – produced a norm that sets no standard specifications. Instead, it provides a set of guidelines that gives all institutions – private and public, commercial and non-profit – the flexibility to set strategies to address them. It does so, in remarkable detail, for a set of seven social responsibility issues: governance; human rights; labour practices; the environment; fair operating practices; consumer issues; and community involvement and development.
If institutions across the continent – led by the Commission – were to embrace these guidelines, there could be rapid advances in addressing the problems facing the Roma. Taking a lead from these guidelines could make a difference. In political and financial terms, it may well also be the most plausible, the most realistic way to make progress with the European Roma Strategy that Hungary plans to unveil during its presidency of the EU.
Paulo Casaca
Managing director,
Alliance to Renew Co-operation Among Humankind
Brussels