ARE THE EUROPEAN AND NATIONAL ROMA POLICIES STILL HYPOCRITICAL?


Tom­i­slav Don­chev is Min­is­ter in charge of EU funds in Bulgaria: "Bul­gar­ia now has a Nation­al Roma Inte­gra­tion Strat­e­gy. For the first time the effort is agreed with 9 min­is­tries and dis­trict gov­ern­ors, who have to part­ner local­ly with rel­e­vant NGOs, are put in charge of its imple­men­ta­tion. Speak­ing of Roma inte­gra­tion, how­e­ver, we need to adhere to a rea­son­a­ble bal­ance between high con­cepts, stra­te­gic pol­i­cies and these peo­ple's par­tic­u­lar prob­lems. Includ­ing this minor­i­ty group into the coun­try's real life is a key issue for the Bul­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment. This is not a short-term pol­i­cy. We are fac­ing spe­cif­ic chal­len­ges at all lev­els. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is a wide­ly-held belief that this inte­gra­tion has been trans­mit­ted top-down from Brus­sels and we have to com­ply with our part­ners' require­ments. It is a fact, though, that we can nev­er achieve tan­gi­ble progress unless this is a con­scious proc­ess and inner neces­si­ty ... Yet, there is still work to be done in devel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful mod­el for inte­gra­tion of those peo­ple in the labour mar­ket. The great­est chal­len­ges are solv­ing issues relat­ed com­plete­ly to Roma peo­ple's dai­ly lives. And we still have a sig­nif­i­cant short­age of inte­gra­tion pol­i­cies - most often they involve a large por­tion of hypoc­ri­sy, but an end will be put to this." Read more on http://www.europost.bg/article?id=4954