Opening of the Integrated EU Platform for the Roma Inclusion

'...The key task of our European society striving to prevent social exclusion and poverty in all of the Roma enclaves across Europe, will be to find a common ethos which will provide a foundation for the realisation of inclusion policies for these communities. Society must also renew and further reinforce mutual trust for the possibility of communal life and the possibility of ensuring equal opportunities for everyone. Betrayed trust often brings deeper misunderstanding, reinforces extremism and brings social segregation. The path towards the achievement of mutual trust must be an absolute declaration of good will...',said Michael Kocáb during the first meeting of the Common European Platform for the inclusion of Roma people which happened in Prague.

Honourable Commissioner, honourable Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to welcome you on behalf of the Czech Chairmanship of the European Council in the opening of the conference which is the first initiative of the European Platform for the inclusion of Roma people. The Government of the Czech Republic would like to contribute to this initiative in the common effort to find a solution to remedy the difficult situation of Roma people in many countries of the European Union.

To begin with allow me to praise the fact that this communal initiative of the Commission of EU Council received a response from other Member States. We were working with our partners at the level of individual European Governments with a vision of European cohesion, Europe with values of freedom, equality, fundamental rights for everyone, as well as learning, understanding and solidarity. We want to build the further development of a European Roma Platform based on these values and assist in aiding the largest national entity in Europe without its own state. The mutual effort should help Roma people to find the opportunity to actively participate in the development of our common home.

In general we might say that in most EU Member States – with few fair exceptions, Roma people experienced very little benefit from the last twenty years of relative prosperity and economic growth. This applies particularly to new Member States which on the whole experienced the inevitable structural reforms after the fall of the communist dictatorship. At the same time differences increased in the incomes between higher and lower qualified groups of people. I dare say that for the majority of the population of these countries the new political freedom brought with it opportunities for self-realisation and for achievement of success in society. Most Roma people did not experience this and were first to lose badly paid jobs and then to regain them at the time of recent European economic growth. Moreover many people who had already been quite successfully integrated into society found themselves in the position of long-term unemployment.

The short-sighted political approach of the actual Governments themselves unfortunately often contributed towards the marginalisation and social exclusion of Roma people. For example the law on the acquisition and the disposal of state citizenship in the Czech Republic has created illegal individuals out of Roma people in our country. The reason for this was due to the lack of information on the acquisition of the Czech citizenship. Roma people failed to apply for it even though they have spent most of their lives in the Czech Republic and considered themselves as Czech. Many Roma people were deprived of legal sources of income and found themselves dependent on usurers and people with a criminal background.

On top of this new forces have appeared in the Czech Republic and in other countries which wanted to exercise newly acquired freedom to exclude Roma people from society. I don't just mean the openly extreme right advocates of neo-Nazi types but also various representatives of local administrations who initially eagerly relocated socially weak people into ghettos and when the situation in these enclaves of poverty became intolerable they labelled the inhabitants of these ghettos as maladjusted without any attempt to offer them fundamental support in their situation. Consequences of such approaches and even their recurrence appear even today. According to research published 3 years ago by the sociologist Gabal, there are a large amount of social exclusion zones in the Czech Republic at present which have been created within the last ten years, often with an active contribution from local administration bodies. Despite the existence of various programs and methods of suggested solutions from individual Ministries, the transfer of them onto the regional and municipal level is so far been unsuccessful.

This kind of policy is extraordinarily short-sighted. Forcing Roma people further into deeper poverty and social exclusion only leads to an accumulation of social problems. It is not in the interest of tax payers that a certain section of society is practically dependent on social security benefits instead of contributing to the creation of common wealth. It is clear that ordinary citizens can hardly benefit from the fact that their neighbours are practically excluded from legally profitable activities and forced into a dismal situation. Moreover some municipalities in our country implement an almost exclusively repressive approach towards socially excluded Roma people known as 'zero tolerance'. This is certainly not for the benefit of the majority of society in the long term. It negatively influences the perception of poverty and it makes the situation of people who are suffering only worse. There is no country in the world which demonstrated that the poor are positively motivated by increasing poverty and by forcing them into zones of hopelessness. Quite the opposite!

Therefore I consider it very important fact that this initiative begins in Prague today with an objective of creating an easier exchange of examples of good practice amongst Member States and which wants to demonstrate that a policy for Roma people and with Roma people makes sense.

And I stress: with Roma people as we know that 'about us – without us' does not work. It is crucial to move from the paternalistic approach of 'We know what is best for Roma people', to dialogue and co-operation. This does not just concern representatives of Roma public activities which are already long-term partners for us but it is also important to approach people that are actually living in the enclaves of social segregation.

Common basic principles which are proposed by the Czech Presidency, supported by the European Commission as well as succeeding Presidencies of Sweden and Spain, are in fact very simple and they are contained in your folders of conference materials. Despite this I dare say that if they were generally followed, many problems of Roma people would be far less acute.

One of these principles is that politics must give people a chance as oppose to forcing them into increasing exclusion as was already explained. The next principle is to firmly direct individual policies of education, employment and housing towards Roma people and consider their cultural specifications. At the same time the policies should not lead to parallel education or a parallel employment market with jobs financed from short-term projects or parallel housing. They should be always directed towards inclusion of Roma people into mainstream of life in the society as emphasised by European Commission and shown in the particular example of Spain.

Let me now thank all of you for your active approach which is demonstrated by the large participation at the conference. Firstly I would like to welcome the participation of the representatives of the Swedish and Spanish Presidencies which will follow after the Czech Presidency. Together with the organisers I welcome their co-operation on the conclusions of this conference – common principles of Roma inclusion within the framework of the EU and approaches of the Platform operation and their support. It is the reason why I am convinced that the Platform for inclusion of the Roma minority will be positively developing also after the hand over of the presidency.

Our common objective is, ladies and gentlemen, a Europe of integrated differences which is cohesive on the basis of common values of freedom, democracy, legal state, social solidarity, development of experience, and also commitment of EU citizens, cultural diversity and diversity of lifestyle. One important instrument of our common objective will be to increase awareness of Europe, about Roma culture and their history. After all, Roma minority are the largest national minority in the European Union and development of their communities and culture is in the interest of all of us as well as in the interest of the whole Union.

I hope that there will be a sense of shared experiences at the meetings as well as fruitful and sound conclusions from the conference and finally I also wish you all a very pleasant stay in Prague.

Thank you for your attention.