Commission Report 2002 (Romania)

Minority rights and the protection of minorities

During the reporting period, positive developments continued to take place with regard to the treatment of minorities. Legislation extending the use of minority languages was implemented relatively smoothly and important steps were taken to implement the National Strategy for Improving the Condition of Roma, with a view to addressing the difficult situation faced by the Roma Community.

The Law on Local Public Administration allows the official use of minority languages in localities where speakers represent more than 20% of the population. This legislation is mainly applicable to the Hungarian minority and, in general terms, it has been successfully applied despite the reticence of some prefectures and local authorities. New legislation stipulates that communities with a minority population of over 20% will be obliged to employ police officers who know the mother tongue of the relevant minority. Progress has already been made with enforcing these new provisions. A further development was the amendment of legislation on the use of the national flag, anthem and coat of arms, in order to allow national minorities to use their own symbols at official gatherings.

Romania has a large Roma population - estimated at between 1 800 000 and 2 500 000. Discrimination against the Roma minority continues to be widespread in Romanian society, and the social inequalities to which the Roma community is exposed remain considerable. Living conditions are poor, access to social services remains limited and human rights organisations have received credible reports of police harassment. Against this context, the Government has made steady progress in implementing last year`s Roma Strategy, which is explicitly aimed at addressing discrimination.

During the reporting period, the structures for the implementation of the Roma Strategy were progressively established. At the county level, the Roma offices provided for in the strategy have become operational. Over 400 Roma have been hired as experts, the responsibilities of these experts have been clarified, and all 42 local Roma offices have elaborated Action Plans for the 2001-2004 period. The Roma Party has been the main interlocutor when making these appointments and efforts should be made to increase the involvement of other Roma organisations.

At the national level, 15 commissions have been established in ministries or national agencies for the implementation of sectoral strategies. In addition to experts from the ministries, these commissions also include a member designated by Roma organisations. There has also been significant progress with the implementation of sectoral policies. In the field of employment the Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity has promoted Roma participation in labour market programmes. The Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Education have also been active in the implementation of the strategy. A particularly important innovation was the official establishment of school and health ``mediators'' since this facilitates improved Roma access to public services in general and to education and health services in particular. Agreement was also reached with the Ministry of Interior to employ 100 policemen from Roma communities during the course of 2002.

Against this positive background, a weakness with the implementation of the Roma Strategy is that the full levels of funding envisaged in the original document have not been made available. This lack of financial support means that it has been impossible to carry out many of the planned activities and efforts have been restricted to less ambitious, and less costly actions. Other concerns are the absence of effective co-ordination mechanisms. Without these, the success of the strategy will rely upon the individual approaches taken by the different institutions involved.

One of the aspects of the Strategy that has not, to date, been satisfactorily addressed is that of housing. This is one of the largest problems affecting Roma communities, many of whom live in unacceptable conditions, without basic amenities and without security of tenancy. Certain local authorities have used this situation to attempt to move Roma into special neighbourhoods, but the Government has firmly rejected any such form of segregation.

Although the legal framework for addressing discrimination against Roma is not yet fully operational, courts did rule against employers and newspapers - for the first time - for publishing discriminatory job vacancies.

As regards the use of minority languages, slight increases were recorded during the 2001/02 school year in the number of mother-tongue educational units and the number of students being educated in their mother tongue. The Department for Inter-Ethnic Relations decided to finance the publication of textbooks for schools teaching through the medium of minority languages. The private Hungarian University ``Sapientia'' functioned well and completed its first academic year in 2001/02 with 450 students attending its courses.

No progress was noted with regard to the Csango minority: a non-homogenous group of between 60 000 and 70 000 Roman Catholic people living in the north-east of Romania who speak a form of Hungarian. Reports from human rights organisations provide evidence that certain local authorities have obstructed attempts by Csango to be taught the Hungarian language (as an optional language). This would contradict current Romanian legislation, which provides the right to study a minority language if there is sufficient demand.

As reported in previous years, Romania is a party to the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. In March 2002, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe concluded that Romania had made commendable efforts to support national minorities and their cultures. Further efforts were required in the fields of media, public employment and education - areas where particular attention would have to be paid to the numerically smaller minorities. The Committee concluded that, despite the determination of the authorities to speed up the social integration of the Roma, real problems remained regarding acts of discrimination, the wide socio-economic differences between Roma and the rest of the Romanian population, as well as ill-treatment by some law-enforcement officials.

---

Next: 1.3. General evaluation
Up: 1.2. Human rights and the
Previous: Economic, social and cultural rights